Beijing

After being on the train for 7 days with nobody ever knowing what timeit was, as we travelled through 8 time zones....it was nice to just spend a month in one place.  Beijing was avery pleasant surprise, one of the cleanest cities I have been to. A lot of beautiful ornate colourful chinese architecture amongst the fast increasing growth of the skyscrapers and the preparations for the Olympicsin 2012.  Although has the highest population the city of Beijing seemed a lot less crowded than London anda sense of peace just permeated the city.  The people here were very friendly and helpful even though I couldnot speak to them, I managed to get across what I needed and they would go out of their way to help me out.I spent the first two weeks in a small hotel in the hutongs (500 year oldalleyways). The hotel was very basic but really beautiful a load of rooms around a courtyard with ornate chinesearchitecture. I didn't meet an English speaking person for 2 weeks, but its surprising how you manage and getby...even got my visa extended and managed to get a blood test done,  saw many famous sites....the Great wall,the Forbidden Palace, where many emporers had lived, one even had 27 concubines in one room in one night,he eventually died of over indulgence. The Summer Palace was the summer residence of Empress Cixi, set in a hugepark.....went boating around the lake and watched a traditional musical and dancing performace on hte outdoorstage. Got harrased by hundreds of chinese school children who had been set the task of speaking to asmany foreigners as they could find, in order to practice their English, they all asked you the same questionsand wrote down your answers in their books. The Ming tombs were incredible...built by hand 9 storeys underground. Visited Tienamen Square and Chairman Mao's Mauseleum, his body was laid out and preserved for all to see...it was a bit like going to Madam Tussaurds! An enormous Buddhist temple with an 18m high Buddha, made you feel quite insignificant, choked on the tonnes of incense being burned. Went to visit a Muslim mosque...where they thought I was Muslim so they quickly ushered me into the ladies prayer room in time for the voice of the Immam to start chanting prayers over the loudspeakers, they let me borrow something to cover my head and I started
copying all the others standing, bending down, kneeling, face down on the ground and repeating the process at least 50 times...my exercise for the week, and at the same time mumbling
prayers or in my case the words to Meatloafs Bat out of Hell! I couldn't get out of it till the end. Interesting though.

Left there and went to sit on a public bench to recover, within 2 minutes a lady came to collect my almost empty bottle of water, as soon as she left a man came to sell me more water.
How very efficient things are here. Then this funny middle aged man with a flashy chinese motorbike which he was obviously very proud of, and which had a lovely velvet covered seat on the back facing backwards, came up to me and offered me a ride to wherever I wanted to go, so I jumped on thinking that was something all locals do......and was so embarrassed when he just rode around up and down the pavement, stopping to show off his new customer to all the people walking down the road, and with them all staring at me wondering what I was doing! Then went into a tea shop and asked for some green tea leaves, the lady just smiled at me, and gave me some tea leaves, little did I realise they have about a hundred types of green tea!!! Well you
live and learn.

Went to the theatre in the evening for a bit of real chinese culture, surprisingly they had subtitles on a screen to the side of the stage, so I spent all my time reading and not watching the actors or knowing who was saying what. It lasted for hours. Food wise I ended up eating whatever I was given, just pointed to something on the menu and ate it....so far the most interesting has been donkey, pigs intestine, monkeys head, pigs foot with nails and all. Anyway went to a stunning restaurant out of town...it was set in the home of an aristocrat from the Qing Dynasty. The buildings were amazing even more so than at the Forbidden Palace. I was gobsmacked throughout the meal.And the gardens stunning too. We were greeted by loads of dynastic costumed ladies and men as we got out of our taxi onto the red carpet.It had to be the most opulent restaurant I had ever been to, and so many costumed waitresses waiting on you hand and foot. The meal was excellent so many dishes and the most succulent pork you could ever imagine.It was all paid for by my new students rich lawyer friend, whose office was like being in New York city, overlooking the colourful lights of Beijings business district.Well I managed to get this job and I moved in with my private student and her 2 cats in her flat in the run-down outskirts of Beijing with a red light district on our doo rstep...all pretending to be hairdressers..was quite funny really, she showed me the real Beijing lifestyle. Karaoke..a favourite passtime for the young Chinese was quite an experience, all her friends sat in this privately hired sound proof room with a large sofa and 18 inch tv screen. Then we took it in turns to be pop stars with a microphone singing along to the corny videos. I actually really got into it, singing wake me up before you go go and other 80's tack.Also enjoyed all the bargaining at the markets, bought some DVD's for 50p, everyone buys copies here. It cost me more to post them back home!!Overall...this is somewhere I would be quite happy to stay. Need to learn Chinese first though, but finding it very difficult. Will spend the next month travelling down through China by train visiting the western mountainous Provinces and the minority groups in China then onto Vietnam.

Health & Safety in Beijing

I know I shouldn't even be looking at construction sites when I am on holiday, but I couldn't help this one. I was walking past a site at night, the nightshift were working in complete darkness, I watched one man balancing precariously on a dodgy piece of scaffolding, which was at some strange angle, he then spent 5 minutes dangling from that scaffolding 15m up, with his foot waving around hunting for a ladder that was too short and placed beneath the scaffolding boards. Made me realise what a good job we do in England.

Taxis

Taxis are the bane of my life especially when they try to rip me off. After St Petersburg where I paid 10 times what I should have I spent half hour arguing with the taxi driver in Mosow...using sign language of course, to pay what I thought was reasonable (without atually knowing what was reasonable). I got him down from 400Rubles to 250 Rubles. Upon arriving in Beijing an unlicenced taxi tried to charge me 50Yuen, I agreed 40 and then on reaching the
hotel I decided that 40 was probably too much so I gave him 30, grabbed my bags and ran out, while he was still fuming! Luckily we were in a tiny alley with traffic queuing up behind so he didn't ome after me. Later I found out a licenced taxi would only have charged 10 Yuen, so I didn't feel sorry for him at all! Well its not the actual amount that matters, I just don't like being taken for a ride! Lesson No 2. Divide taxi asking price by 4 when entering a new country.

Trans Siberian Train (Mongolian Route)

Day1
Moscow has about 9 train stations so I wasn't quite sure which one I was meant to be at for my trans-siberian trip and neither were the guards or workers at the stations! Anyway i eventually made it to the right place with just a few minutes to go and what a nice surprise - the train was a Chinese train with Chinese guards - smiling friendly welcoming faces. :) It really didn't matter that they couldn't speak any english, just the fact that they were friendly more than made up for it. And there was more! I ended up in a luxury first class compartment all to myself. I was the only one on hte train with such luxury. The compartment had 2 bunks another window seat, a table and a shower room with a sink and an extendable tap, which could at a push be used as a shower. The room had a carpet and wood panelling, and the toilet was at the end of the carraige. Everything was kept very clean by the guards in first class. I was queen for a week. I ended up sharing on the last day though with a big wheezing American guy. He was very nice though.

There were a lot of other Europeans particularly Scandinavians on the train. And the Dutch couple in the next cabin were also carrying pee mates with them...which was a real coincidence...but quite normal for them.

Anyway the train began rolling at 9.30pm and made a couple of stops in hte night at Vladmir and Gorki.


Day 2
Breakfast in the Russian restaurant...nothing for veggies except half cooked fried eggs and stale white bread, but even that is delicious when you are hungry and have no choice.

The rest of the train consisted of 2nd 3rd and 4th classes. A lot of Europeans in 2nd, in 3rd and 4th classes huge Chinese families from grandma to grandchildren sprawled all over the corridors, fat Russian families with their chickens and fish and tough Mongolian traders smuggling huge boxes of goods and every nook and cranny they could find.

Along the route the train stopped many times giving us time to get off and buy food from the little old Russian ladies in their scarves and woolly cardies selling their home grown veg. I ended up eating fresh tomatoes and cucumbers for lunch and dinner every day for the rest of the trip.

The train chugged along at about 50mph max passing a lot of forest interspersed with odd little villages with collapsing wooden shacks each with their own vegetable patch. Occasionally passing small rivers and meadows full of wild flowers over rolling hills. A lot of the trees were being logged here.

Day 2 continued...
Well while on the train I was accosted by a lovely Mongolian man.. a bit
of a wheeler dealer, funnily enough he
had completed the Art of Living meditation course...what a small world...anyway
it just so happened that he
was helping some other Mongolian smugglers with illegal goods on the train,
he seemed to know all the officials
at the border points, all the train workers etc...anyway he proceeded to
seranade me with a Mongolian love
song, and wanted me to go and live with him and his horses and his family
in the Gobi dessert in his Ger
(Mongolian tent). Maybe next time.........

In the evening we reached the Ural mountains, well more like hills really,
and as I sat in my cosy little wood
panelled cabin, I watched the sun setting over the lakes and mountains,
a beautiful bright red sunset...really
stunning. The Urals are heavily mined for coal and lot of surface mining
still goes on in these parts as well as in
China. We made stops in hte night at Sverdlovsk, Tumen, Ishim and Omsk.

Day 3
Another beautiful day, past many colourful meadsows and some small towns,
again the houses were small wooden
shacks each with vegetable patch. It was a very flat landscape you could
see for miles...a bit like Norfolk! We
travelled all day across the West Siberian Plains. Spent the day drinking
beer with the Dutch next door and
reading...managed to read the whole lonely planet Trans-Siberian Guide
from cover to cover.
Stops today included Balabinsk, Novosibirsk and Tomsk (yes, as in the Womble!)

Day 4
More soggy uncooked fried eggs and by now even staler Russian bread for
breakfast....better than starving I
suppose. Back in the moutains today, covered in silver birches again interrupted
at intervals by small wooden
shacks. A lot of logging goes on here and many freight trains with logged
timber passed by. Don't know what
their environmental policies are like?

Not so sunny today either, but no less pleasant. I managed to buy more
home grown tomatoes and cucumbers
from the little old Russian ladies at the station, to stock up on my supplies,
I even managed to get a couple of
bananas, a bit exotic for this part of the world, but I had to pay dearly....5
Rubles each (20p total).

Met a lot more Europeans on the train today, Lithuanians, Swedes, Norwegians,
Dutch. Celebrated summer
solstice with the Swedes...lots of beer and champagne.

Stops made today include Kroasnoyarsk, Ilanskaya, Taishet, Nizhne-Udmsk,
Zima, Angarsk

Day 5
Woke up at hourly intervals throughout the night to gaze out at the sun
rising over the beautiful Lake Baikal,
the worlds deepest lake, was 7km deep but now with sedimentation is 2km
deep and is in the process of
widening. One day it will be the worlds5th ocean. It also contains 1/5th
of the worlds fresh water. Although it
is becoming very polluted from the local industries. Anyway it was still
an amazing sight, very still lake with mist
rising against the surrounding tree covered mountains.

At 1pm we stopped at the Russian border, we had to wait 4 hours while the Russian mafia, took our passports away went off to watch telly for a bit, play cards and generally feel that the

Day 5 continued...
At 1pm we stopped at the Russian border for 4 hours (at stations the toilets are locked so we have to cross our
legs the whole duration), while some Russians border control officers took our passports away to their office,
had lunch, watched telly, played darts, others just wondered up and down our train looking authoritative. Well
they have to look like they are doing some work! Luckily on our train were a Russian dancing school, so the
kids all got off the train and practiced their dances on the platform...that kept us entertained for a good two
hours. They were excellent too.

Eventually we got our passports back and we were off again, everyone rushed to the loo in the proceeding half
hour before we reached the Mongolian border crossing where we would have to wait another 4 hours for the
same process to take place. The Mongolians were a little friendlier than the Russians and kept reminding us of
the fact, but they were also much more switched onto the fact that they could make money out of tourist, so
one of the officials - a woman, came onto the train with dodgy looking printed cards which she told us were life
insurance and obligatory if we were travelling through Mongolia, even if we weren't spending any time there,
after a bit of questioning and arguing I ended up paying her 10 dollars for the piece of card. So now I have
Mongolian life insurance. Well I didn't want to risk being taken off the train for questioning if i refused to buy
it....I obviously hadn't read the bit in the Lonely Planet which warned of 10 dollar life insurance scams in
Mongolia!

While we had stopped we had changed from an electric to a deisel locomotive.

The landscape had also become much more dry, coming into the dessert, dusky mountains in the background,
with another beautiful red sunset forming behind the peaks and horses roaming on dry grassy plains.

The train made the following stops today, Irtusk, Slyudyanka, Ulan Ude, Guisinoy Lake, Jida, Naushki, Dozorne,
Suhe Bator.

Day 6
Woke up in Mongolia, a much more lively city, which rich and poor living side by side. Also on the outskirts of
the city were gers ( herders tents) set up wherever they had felt like it. Cows and horses roamed freely over
the dry land. You could tell how rich a herder was fromthe number of horses that he owned. In hte autumn
they would kill their cows for food becuase they would not be able to survive the freezng winters, where it
reaches -40 degrees. However the horses were much more resilient. If they ran out of food though they would
occasionally kill a horse too. The gers were enormous tents which they moved every 4 months or so, they were
canvas on the outside and lined with felt on the inside, they also laid wooden flooring and had a central fire
place, rather cosy. An outdoor toilet and washing in the nearby river...god knows what they did about washing
in the winter...probably heated up some water on the fire. Its amazing to think that during Genghis Khans
rein, the Mongolians had conquered all the countries between Hungary and Vietnam, including all of Russia and
China!!!! The biggest empire ever, they even pushed backthe Roman empire.

Well this morning I also had a big wheezing retired American man arrive to share my little cabin, a bit of a
squeeze, but it was ok for a day and a half, good job it wasn't for the whole journey.

Later this day, we entered the Gobi dessert......sand for miles and miles. You couldn't even get bored looking
out at the dessert all day...it was spectular, always something coming up, the occasional ger, hawk, camels.
Even a camel being skinned for food. This was all part of the old silk route. The temperature outside was 39
degrees, but our train was nicely air conditioned.

We stopped for 4 hours again at the Mongolian border, on leaving the country. Then 45mins later stopped again
at the Chinese border. They were much more efficient, only 2 hours and each time the cabins were checked
for smuggled goods, don't know how the Mongolians had got away with it...probably bribes.

The train was then taken to have its wheels changed. Each carriage was jacked up with us in it and the wheels
replaced for the different gauge in China. ( The Russians wanted to have a different gauge than the rest of the
world to stop invaders!).

Stops made today, Darhan, Zonhola, Ulan Bataar, Choyr, Sain-Shada, Dzamynude

Day 7
Awoke to rows of crumbling but very beatiful 500 year old chinese brick houses. Also plains of vegetated land
with huge crevices at very regular intervals where rivers had washed away the crumbling sandstone. It was
the most spectacular sight, very romantic, just like a chinese painting. I was gobsmacked and just spent the
rest of the day staring out at the beauty of north China.....the paddy fields, corn fields, donkeys and farm
workers. This reminded me very much of India except a lot more organised and less chaotic. We came into
the mountains, really steep craggy rocks in the mist and got glimpses of the amazing great wall, I can't beleive
how steep it is in places, incredible how they built it in such conditions. One of the most beautiful sites I have
ever seen.
Arrived in Beijing at 2.30pm. Felt quite sad at leaving the train, the cosy room, the cheery guards and all the
friendly Europeans, Chinese and Mongolians and even Russians I had met.