A week in Beijing

We met two Irish people on the Beijing subway on our way to the hostel - not really a big deal, but we hadn't heard an Irish accent since we left Krakow in Poland almost a month earlier so it stood out when we heard it here and it was nice to talk to Irish people again :-)

We really landed on our feet when we picked a hostel - it was a great little spot with cheap food and drink, a charming courtyard where many of the travellers congregated in the evenings discussing what they got up to that day, it was walking distance from Tiananmen square and most of the sights of Beijing and - most importantly - it was right in the middle of a Hutong so had a real chinese atmosphere to it.

A Hutong is an area of backstreets and alleyways full of little shops and stalls. It was constantly bustling with rickshaws whizzing past and with many steaming stoves and lovely smelling foods. (The public toilets in the hutong didn't smell so nice though!)

We visited many of the local sights during our time there, including the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, but unfortunately didn't get to see Mao in his Mausoleum due to a mix up with opening hours (one of the many times Lonely Planet let us down). We also got to try the Beijing Duck, or as they call it in Beijing, the Duck ;-) The food in general was fabulous, and at a cost of about 2 Euro per person for a huge meal, eating out became a frequent luxury :-)

I also got an overdue haircut here, but since the barber spoke about as much english as I can speak chinese (none!), it took a few attempts before the barber had an idea of what I wanted - at which point there wasn't much hair left! Oh well, on the plus side he maximised the length of time I can wait before my next haircut.

We were sad to leave Beijing since we met up with a nice group in the hostel and had one of our best weeks of our travels so far. But all good things must come to an end, so on 11th Sep (yes, I'm a little behind in writing these entries, but am catching up) we caught the overnight train to Shanghai and then the 2 day ferry to Osaka in Japan.

Fun at the Chinese border

The Chinese border itself was not too much trouble (although the usual sitting around for a few hours in a stationary train doesn't get more interesting with practice). However, the fun started when we got out of the station and tried to get to Beijing.

After our 4 hours on the train that morning waiting to pass the border from Mongolia, we finally emerged from the train around noon. We were assured that there would be plenty of busses to meet the train and sure enough there was a huge mob of hawkers there trying to sell us a bus ticket (in fact, all busses were the same - these were just different salesmen). One poor unfortunate soul had the misfortune of asking us if we wanted a bus to Beijing. I say unfortunate because little did he realise that he was gonna be stuck with us for the next 6 hours.

Since we had come from Mongolia, we had no Chinese money on us just yet so told our friend that we'd take his bus but that we had to go to the bank first.

"Bank? OK!" he said, and so our tour of Erlian began. The first bank he took us to was some regional bank - one which hadn't yet heard of ATMs, and so we moved on to bank No. 2. Thankfully this bank knew what an ATM machine was (I know the M stands for Machine, but I'm writing this so you can like it or lump it) but didn't know what a Visa card was :-(

When we arrived at Bank No. 3, we were greeted to a beautiful Visa sticker inside the bank :-) Saved! (or so we thought). The ATM accepted our card, but worked really slowly and after about 3 minutes, spat our card out with a "timed out" error. We went into the bank and tried to explain this to the staff. They just looked at our Visa card and shook their heads. I felt like taking their Visa logo and stuffing it in the bin! by now our taxi driver was getting a little impatient and said several things to us in Chinese (he knew we didn't understand). His English ammounted to: 'No maney, no Beijing' - we got the message, but since he had driven us around for the past hour, he wanted us to get our money too (so that he could get paid).

He seemed to be under the impression that the Visa ATM would work after 4pm (not much good to us though since the bus left at 3pm). We tried to go to some of the larger hotels hoping that they could charge our card and give us the cash, but they too thought it was hillarious that we wanted to uses such an obscure card in their town.

After our taxi-man brought us to some blackmarket moneylenders (he seemed to think because we had no money, we could invent some to change), we eventually returned to the bank at 4pm. Sure enough, there was no difference. In fact, a member of staff of the bank tried to "help" by turning off the ATM while I was using it! This only helped the machine to swallow my card...

So here we were - 400km from the nearest town, no money, we had missed the bus to Beijing, no hotels took Visa and now the bank machine had swallowed my card (Kate still had hers). Our plans at this point revolved around waiting 3 days for the next train from UB so that we could ask some western tourists if they could lend us some money.

Thankfully this was the lowest point of the day. We managed to come across a Western Union branch in nowheresville (aka Erlian), and after phoning Conor (our taxi-man paid for the calls!), we were soon the recipients of US $350 :-) I even got my Visa card back!

Our transport out of Erlian - 11 hours after arriving!

Because we missed our bus, our taxi-man arranged for a friend of his to drive us 4 hours through the Gobi desert to the next town so that we could catch an overnight train to Beijing. We finally left Erlian at 7pm (11 hours after we arrived) and spent the journey teaching our driver some English :-) He was very nice, and even went into the station with us to buy our train tickets and made sure we got all we needed. Before he left, he gave us his phone number in case we had any more problems, and then a hug goodbye :-)

Mongolia

From Irkutsk we got a train to Ulaanbaatar (or 'UB' for those of us who don't even want to attempt pronounciation!) - the captial of Mongolia! The 24hour journey south was fairly uneventful apart from the usual delays of passing through the border (about 6 hours to cross about 10km!). A friend of ours from the parachute club happens to do a bit of work with the Mongolian government and when we told him of our plan to travel through UB, he said to us: 'You must stay in my apartment there!' :-) ...and so we did.
Cheers Ollie!

We spent a week in Mongolia altogether and it was great to have a place called home again. We caught up on some much needed washing and sat back and watched old films. If you ever wondered where the 1980's 'straight to video' movies end up, well the answer is 'Mongolian TV' :-) We also took some time out of the city and spent a few days in the countryside where we stayed in a traditional Mongolian 'ger' (tent). The countryside was fabulous and because we were so far from any towns, the view of the night sky was absolutely amazing.

We hoped to get a direct train from UB to Beijing in China, but since they were all booked up weeks in advance, we had to settle for a train to the Chinese border where we could then catch a bus to Beijing. Little did we realise that our week of rest in UB would have been so necessary...

The lake on the lake

During my first night in Irkutsk, I awoke at one point in the middle of the night and (as you would expect) the bed was not moving. However, in my semi-sleepy state the first thought that came into my head was "we're not moving - we must be at a station" :-)

While Irkutsk was a welcome break, our main reason for stopping here was to make our way to Lake Bakial - the largest lake in the world (and the deepest too at 1400m). We set off early for the bus station to get the 8am bus to Olkhon Island - an island situated on the lake. Now in most civilised cities in the world, you can buy long distance bus tickets and international train tickets using a credit card... but this was Russia!

We didn't expect the bus station to accept Visa but I suppose we half expected that there would be an ATM somewhere near the bus station (after all, there was one right outside our hostel). I won't begin to describe the rollercoster taxi ride I ended up taking from the bus station looking for an ATM, but let me say that only the Russians know why there are no ATMs anywhere nearby. The russians might also be able to tell you why there are only 2 ATMs in the whole of Irkutsk (population 600,000) - but they sure weren't gonna tell us!

Olkhon Island and the views of the lake were beautiful. The town itself was very quiet which was a welcome break from the crammed train and the previous big cities we had been staying in. In fact our guesthouse had an actual tumbleweed pinned to the wall :-) Other resembelances to the wild west were the lack of flushing toilets, no land lines and no running water.

We hired bikes and went exploring, planning on going for a dip in the lake but after putting our feet in, we changed our minds (the lake actually freezes over in winter and you can drive across to the island). The temp rarely goes above 6 deg. Instead, we settled for a smaller lake on the island which gets a little warmer.


One thing I was quite impressed with was a particular entrepeneur (sp?) who set up an internet cafe... Bearing in mind that there are no land lines on the island and electricity was only installed last year, I didn't expect to find any internet access. Anyway, I followed the signs and was lead to a guy's house! He brought me into his bedroom where he had a connection set up. I can only guess that the huge satellite dish on the side of his house had something to do with it :-)

The Trans-Siberian Railway (really this time!)

Life on the train was a strange existence. The whole of the russian rail network (which spans 9 timezones) all works on Moscow time (MT). This means that all the times quoted on all tickets and all the clocks at ANY station in Russia show MT.

Our trip from Moscow to Irkutsk was to take about 4 days to cover the 5300kms. According to our tickets, we would arrive in at 10pm at night, but when we allowed for the local time zone, this would mean arriving at 3am! Rather than have to get up in the middle of the night, we decided (along with the only other 2 english speakers on the train - Mark and Ritch) that we would stay on MT until Irkutsk :-)

We were staying in 2nd class, which means 4 beds in a small compartment. Unfortunately for us, we had 5 people in our compartment (a mother and child took up "one" space). The compartments are connected by a small walkway which runs the length of the carriage. Endless hot water is available on the train, so tea and pot noodles becomes breakfast, lunch and dinner :-)

The train stops 2 or 3 times each day at various stations along the route - where we could get off the train and stretch our legs. We could also buy food etc (ie. noodles!) from the local 'hawkers'.

Mark and Ritch were very nice people and since the 4 of us english speakers were practically shunned by all the remaining passengers, a 'them and us' situation seemed to arise. Lonely Planet had told us that the train would be full of english speaking tourists and that any russians we might meet would be friendly and make an effort to get to know us - Ha! At one stop, Mark (or was it Ritch) managed to get hold of some vodka and OJ so we had ourselves a small party (between the carriages, since each attendent told us to move to the next carriage). We stood around doing impressions of the unsmiling grumpy russians :-) We battled on living in MT, while many of the remaining passengers tried to adjust their body clocks to the inevitable +5 timezone.

There were good points to the trip too. Each day we awoke we could see noticable changes in the landscape. I could sit for hours looking out the window, at houses where people live in their whole lives and which fly past us in an instant.

All in all, this was not the experience I was hoping for, but an experience I'll never forget none-the-less. When the bright lights of Irkutsk finally arrived in the middle of the night, we were alive and giddy with excitement!