John King

The end of the beginning

2007-02-18T21:27:00.000+11:00

Okay, so to say that this entry is late is a bit of an understatement. My original excuse was that I had several weeks of no internet access after arriving in Australia. My excuse evolved into me not having the time because I was looking for a job and a place to live but really I suppose I got lazy! Anyway with no excuses left I decided it's time for the latest update... happy reading!

After 5 months travelling, 10,000 miles, 16 countries, 10 time zone changes, 26 long distance train journeys (some very long!), more hostels than I care to remember, 3 ferry journeys, 3 flights, 7kg lighter (me, not my bags!) and only 2 pages left in my passport, we finally arrived in Australia on Dec 20th.

We arrived in Adelaide on a scorcher of a day. Working in Vietnam gave us a chance to get used to high temperatures but being from Ireland, it'll take me a little longer to get used to 30 deg C at 8am! We spent Christmas and New Years with Kate's mother who lives near Adelaide. When I say 'near Adelaide' it's a bit like Galway being 'near Dublin'. Australia is a big place and distances can be divided by 10 when being compared to Ireland.

Now, I am not a big fan of snakes (unless they're dead, and even then I don't want to get too close) but everyone told me that they're actually quite rare. In fact, of all the people I was talking to (about snakes) only a few had actually seen one in the wild. So you can imagine my surprise when I found a brown snake (yes, poisonous) all by myself ...in the house!!! Ok, so it was only a baby snake but I was glad when it was safely back outside and I was safely in. I've been keeping a closer watch ever since.

During our time in Adelaide we picked up a new car and Kate started taking flying lessons. She now has done 5 lessons and is eager to get back to doing a few more. We eventually left Adelaide (or more specifically, Maitland) and took a leisurely road trip along the coast road around the south coast of Australia to Melbourne. This was a great drive and the weather was fantastic too - I saw my first kangaroos and first koala bears! The Great Ocean Road is along this section and it too was fantastic.

The 12 Apostles (or what's left of them) along the Great Ocean Road

The blue lake in the volcanic crater of Mt. Gambier

After we arrived in Melbourne we met up with Marty, a skydiving friend of ours who recently moved back to Australia, and stayed with him for a week or so. We also met up with Barney and Patricia, old friends who have been living in Melbourne for the last few years. During this time, we had a look around for a longer term place to live and found a nice 2 bedroom apartment not far from the city centre. Let this be the official invite to anyone who would like to visit us and see Melbourne. The spare room is waiting :-)

Unfortunately, this travelling lark could not last forever and so I finally went to some job interviews over the past few weeks for Actuarial jobs in Melbourne. They were successful (or unsuccessful depending on your point of view!) and I will be starting work again after a 9-month break.

To make the most of our last few day of freedom, we decided we'd get into the Australian way of life and spent the last week back on the Great Ocean Road, on a 5-day surfing course... Totally bodacious man! ...or something, surf-lingo lessons are not till advanced class! ;-)

Melbourne City - home sweet home for the foreseeable future

Rainbow Divers

2006-12-30T13:55:00.000+11:00

The PADI Divemaster (DM) course is taught at Rainbow through an internship programme. This means that we had crossed the line from being a customer and were now staff. Rather than arriving at the boat each morning to see our equipment all ready and waiting, we now had to get up at 5am every morning to assist with loading the boat.

There are a series of requirements you must complete to be qualified as a divemaster and unfortunately this included a bunch of exams! (I distinctly remember celebrating earlier this year the fact that I had ‘No more exams!’ ...clearly I was mistaken.) We had been warned that these were the most likely reason for not completing the DM course in the time allowed, so we put our heads down and worked on these solidly for the first 8-9 days.

With the exams out of the way, we could then get stuck into the more practical parts. These included:

Making a map of an underwater section (30m x 50m)
A series of swim tests
Assisting with a variety of courses
More rescue assessments
other stuff!

Being out on the boat every day was excellent and we tripled our dive numbers. For breakfast each morning, we ate ‘street food’ down by the harbour. This is exactly as it sounds... we sat out on the street (on little plastic tables and chairs) and ate spicy noodles which were cooked in a big communal pot. It was delicious! And at only 5,000 Vietnamese Dong per bowl (about €0.25), it was well worth the money :-)

It wouldn’t be right to travel to a country and not experience a proper thunderstorm (we’ve been through one in almost every country so far) so sure enough, before we left, we were greeted with not 1 but 2 typhoons (the eastern hemisphere version of a hurricane). The eye of Typhoon Durian passed just south of our location, and nearly all the boats were taken out of the water so as to avoid damage. This slowed down our progress a little, but thankfully we managed to complete the last of the requirements on 7th December, my birthday :-)

We made some great friends in Rainbow and we were sorry to leave, but my Australia Visa was waiting for nobody (I had to enter by Jan 7th). So we finally packed up our stuff and headed on to Ho Chi Minh City (6 weeks late) and then flew to Singapore (our first flight in almost 5 months). Before we left, there was talk of coming back to do the Instructor Course... We came back once, we might be back again!

'The biggest cup of coffee in Hanoi'

2006-12-08T21:30:00.000+11:00

Hanoi is a funny little town - especially if it's your first experience of South East Asia (as it was for me).

First of all, with a population of 4 million it's not a 'little town' at all but this was my first thought after having spent so much time in China (where there are over 160 cities with a population over 1 million). The little narrow streets and the fact that none of the buildings are more than 3-4 floors high adds to this notion.

Secondly, there were an amazing amount of scooters around! It was like being in Finglas only without the tracksuits. This is not that unusual for those who have travelled in SE Asia already, but I found the constant beeping of horns and crazy driving to be overwhelming. In Ireland, someone beeps the horn if they are annoyed (and they want the annoy-er to know about it). In Hanoi, I think it's how you say hello. (It's also how you say 'I want to overtake you' and 'Fair enough... off you go'.) The drivers were crazy and we had already seen one road fatality after only 3 bus journeys!

While we're on the subject of dead bodies... after missing out on seeing Chairman Mao in Beijing, we had hoped to get a peek at the embalmed body of Ho Chi Min but unfortunately he (it?) was on loan to Russia for its annual maintanance.

The Lonely Planet mentioned a place called the Kangaroo Cafe which served 'the biggest cup of coffee in Hanoi'. This sounded like just the trick to take our mind off the mayham so we dropped in. This was the first step in a chain of events which would result in us staying for 7 weeks in Vietnam.

Kangaroo Cafe (as well as serving coffee) also offered a variety of tours. We decided to sign up for their 3 day boat tour of Halong Bay - a beautiful bay with huge limestone rocks jutting out of the sea. The tour was fantastic and we ended up sharing the boat almost entirely with a bunch of Aussies (I think I'm going to like living in Australia!). One night of the tour, we stopped off at an Island and dropped into a Kiwi bar for a few drinks. This one in particular had a flyer for 'Rainbow Divers', a dive centre in Nha Trang (our next destination) and a map of the same town on the back.

After Halong Bay, we took a 26 hour train journey south to Nha Trang (listed as the best scuba diving spot in Vietnam). We wanted to do a dive or two so thought it was worth stopping off before moving on to Ho Chi Min City (aka Saigon).

With the Rainbow Divers flyer and map in hand, we made our way to their shop and were very impressed with what we saw. They had 2 PADI Course Directors as staff (PADI's highest rating) and a pile of other experienced instructors, and could offer any and all courses. We decided to make use of the opportunity (and the very low cost) and signed up to do the PADI Rescue Diver course.

We had the full attention of an excellent senior instructor (and two divemasters) all to ourselves for the whole 5 days and thoroughly enjoyed the course. There were jokes about coming back and doing the divemaster course (6 weeks+) but with Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia & Singapore still to come there just wasn't time (maybe next year, we thought). So we bought our train ticket on to Saigon and were sorry to have to leave the place.

While packing up our stuff, we discussed it a bit more about if and when we would come back and came to the conclusion that there's no time like the present. And so it came that we completely changed our itinirary for the remainder of the trip.

All those other countries would have to wait for another trip, and all because of the biggest cup of coffee in Hanoi.

Good morning Vietnam!!

2006-12-08T21:29:00.000+11:00

It took about 2 days of travel to get from Hong Kong to Vietnam. We took a local train from central Hong Kong to the 'frontier' with mainland China and walked back across the border into un-civilisation. (When I first heard that you can walk across the border between China and HK, I pictured something like open plains with barbed wire and signs saying 'No mans land'. As it turns out, it's much less interesting than that - more like passing the security area at an airport - right up to getting your passport stamped.) We knew we were back in China again when we heard that familiar hoicking sound :-)

From the border we took another train to Guangzhou then an overnight sleeper to Nanning arriving in at around 4am. There's not much to do at 4am in many places and there's even less when you're in the middle of China, so you can imagine our surprise when we stumbled onto a 24-hour internet cafe right next to the station (with a surprisingly fast connection too!)

The quality of the trains we travelled on was inversly proportional to our distance from HK until by the time we left Nanning destined for the Vietnamese border, we were piled into the worst train we have been on yet (and we've been on a LOT of trains). It was like a scene out of Oliver Twist, with people crammed onto uncomfortable wooden seats in stiffling heat. It took us over 4 hours to go about 80 miles! Even at EUR 1.70, it was bad value for money!

The train didn't actually go to the Vietnamese border - but instead, dropped us about 10km away. Of course, where there are tourists, there are opportunists and we made this trip on the back of a 3-wheeled motorbike :-)

Unlike the China/HK border, the China/Vietnam border actually IS like I described above! There's about a 1km stretch that you have to walk along between the two borders, each with little huts where people can eye you suspiciously and then grudgingly stamp your passport. I really enjoyed the experience :-) We would later learn that our 1-month visa we got for our planned 10 day visit would not be long enough!

We finally arrived in Hanoi later that night and enjoyed a well deserved rest.

A week in Hong Kong

2006-11-25T20:44:00.000+11:00

Once again, I'm a little behind in these posts (this one is about a month out of date!). This is because I've spent the past few weeks working and studying. 'Studying?' you say? (That's what I was thinking too!) You'll have to wait till the next post or two to learn more...

I had been looking forward to getting to Hong Kong for quite a while. Kate had been there a few times before and had nothing but good things to say, and the added bonus of reaching civilisation again after the few weeks in China also appealed to me :-)

While Hong Kong is under Chinese rule (again, after 150 years with the British at the helm) it has a much more modern feel to it than the rest of China. It is very like a prosperous European city but still maintains the character and culture of China.

Dublin is still working to produce an integrated ticket system which will work on all forms of public transport (dublin bus, cie, luas, etc.) but Hong Kong has had this for the past 20 years in the form of an 'Octopus' magnetic card. You don't even need to take it our of your wallet, just put your wallet or bag near the sensor and the credits are deducted - and it's not just for public transport, you can even use it to pay for your Starbucks coffee! (Sorry cartys1!)

White faces are not unusual so we no longer got the 'outsider' stares that we came to know and love travelling through the rest of China. Accomodation and food was quite a bit more expensive that 'Mainland' China but still cheaper than Dublin prices.

We took a trip to Ocean Park, a fun park on Hong Kong Island

We spent our week just walking around the city and taking if fairly easy. Electronic stuff is particularly cheap here - probably one of the cheapest places in the world for it - so we oogled around a few of the shops and ended up with a pair of the new 8GB ipod nano's, less than 3 weeks on the market when we got them :-)

At 8pm every evening, there's a light show syncronised to music - if you can imagine buildings dancing, this would be it! It was really impressive, and we probably watched it 5 nights out of the 8 we spent there.

We had a fantastic time with our week in Hong Kong and we'll definately be back again. We were sorry we had to go, but there was much more to see and do so we got ourselves some more train tickets and set off on the 2 day journey to Vietnam.

Goodbye Camera :-(

2006-11-25T20:25:00.000+11:00

Unfortunately I will not be able to add any new photo's to picasaweb because our camera was stolen :-( The camera itself is covered by our insurance policy ...minus the policy excess (those insurance companies and their damn actuaries!) but unfortunately we also lost our photo's from the past few weeks which were still on the memory card.

We'll buy an new one again soon, but I'm afraid to get one while here in Vietnam where they probably make fake 'Made in China' labels (not exactly an endorsement in the first place) for their Vietnamese products!

China (Part 2)

2006-10-23T18:37:00.000+10:00

Am a little behind in these entries, so I'll try to summarise the 3 weeks into one post.

From Shanghai, we took the train to Xi'an (pronounced Shean - obviously!). Our hostel had agreed to meet us at the train station (the train arrived in at 5:30am) and we were happy when we emerged from the crowds at the station and saw a guy holding up a sign reading 'John King'. We were at one side of the barrier and he was at the other so he told us to just walk around to where he was (round trip of about 20m). Simple enough, we thought. But when we walked around, the guy had disappeared! After waiting for about 15/20 mins and searching the immediate area for him we accepted that he had left us behind. We took a taxi to the hostel and when we were checking in told them about the guy leaving us behind. "We're very sorry", they said, "please have a free cup of coffee in our resturant". Fair enough, we thought and did so while we waited for our room to be prepared. Then we saw the sign on the wall saying that all guests get a free cup of coffee while waiting for their room - welcome to China, we thought :-)

While in Xi'an, we made a trip to the Terra Cotta warriors - one of the biggest tourist attractions in China. They were quite impressive, but we were hoping to get a little closer to them. Unfortunately, they are set up so that you look down onto them from above and you don't really get that close.

In Xi'an, we also hired bikes and cycles around the city walls - a round trip of 14km.

From Xi'an, we took a 17 hour train journey south to the city of Chengdu. In the sleeping car lottery, we were assigned to a chain smoking chinese man. Thankfully he didn't smoke in our confined compartment, but did spend the entire journey (day and night) coughing up flem into a bin the way only chinese people can. Thankfully he was in a lower bunk, so didn't have to spit past any of us :-)

The hostel we stayed in at Chengdu was the cheapest we had come across so far, with beds for as little as EUR 1.50 per person. We decided to splurge and spent a whopping EUR 7 on a room to ourselves. About 10km outside Chengdu, is a Giant Panda breeding centre, complete with Giant Pandas (both big and small) and embarassing videos showing all aspects of how the scientists carry out the breeding. Autumn is the time when the baby pandas are born so we were lucky to see some new borns about the size of a kitten. They were all in incubators and we expect that the pandas get better health care than most Chinese people!

We booked ourselves onto a 4-day cruise along the Yangtze river, and ended up meeting up with a nice bunch of Europeans on an otherwise chinese boat. We were even blessed by being assigned 2 germans in the sleeping compartment lottery! Most of the Yangtze river is polluted and covered in a layer of smog, but part of our tour included a trip up into 3 little gourges which were really quite spectacular (although not as good as I'd seen in Norway).

By the time we arrived at our destination we decided we had spent enough time in China and so made a bee-line for Hong Kong.

Shanghai

2006-10-06T21:53:00.000+10:00

We arrived in Shanghai (again) on October 1st. We had been travelling for just over 2 months, been through 10 countries and about 15 cities, but I have never seen so many people in one place as we saw when we arrived in Shanghai!

You see, in China almost the entire population (1.3 billion people) are given their holidays at the same time. One of these holidays is some time in May, but unfortunately for us, the other time is on National Day which is actually a week long holiday, beginning on Oct 1st. It's bascially the Chinese equivalent of St. Patricks Day except without the drunk school children :-) After 3 days, we decided we'd had enough of the crowds so booked a train to Xi'an (home of the terra cotta warriors).

Unfortunately for me, my strongest memory of Shanghai will not be the crowds...

I had really grown to like the Chinese food and given that it's so cheap there's no reason at all not to eat out all the time. On one particular evening, I decided to head out to a resturant I spotted nearby to our hostel (luckily for her, Kate wasn't hungry). When I walked in to the very well decorated resturant, I was quite surprised to see that the whole place was empty - in fact, even the staff even seemed shocked that they had a customer and not only that, but a western customer!

Immediately, I was ushered in and seated at their best table. It seemed that the staff couldn't do enough for me. I had no less than 4 people fussing over me, all smiling and delighted to have a 'celebrity' in their resturant. One was removing the extra place settings, another was straightning out my own place setting. Somebody put a napkin on my lap and someone else poured me a cup of chinese tea. A few of the kitchen staff even ran out to have a look and giggled at the spectacle of a non-empty resturant.

Then I was presented with the menu - no english, no pictures.

I didn't want to offend them by just getting up and walking out (they had genuinely done their best to make me comfortable) so I just asked for 'chicken?'. One of the staff - the only one with English - pointed at something and told me in his best pigeon-english that this was chicken. I said ok and also asked for rice.

One person took the order off to the kitchen and the rest of the staff bascially just stood next to me, staring at me in their big empty fancy resturant, smiling at me and to each other. I didn't know what else to do but smile back and laugh to myself, wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

I was surprised when the food arrived so quickly (less than 2 minutes) and even more surprised when I saw what was presented to me. It was literally half a chicken, cut right down the middle - barely cooked - including half a head, half a beak, half of all the guts inside and one eye! The outside was a pale yellow colour. I didn't know what to do except laugh to myself and start eating the rice. One of the smiling staff had a brainwave and realised that I must not be eating the chicken because I didn't have a knife and fork (only chopsticks). He then brought over a knife and fork, and pointed again at the chicken... I looked around again and saw all the smiling staff standing right behind me. There was nothing else to do except find the leanest bit of chicken and eat. This is when I found out the chicken was cold! No wonder it took 2 minutes to prepare!

This pic (taken elsewhere, afterwards) shows something similar to what I was served.

I poked away at my chicken and ate my rice for about 20 minutes. At this point many of my fans had given me some space and went back to whatever there is to do in an empty resturant. I used the lack of attntion as my escape route and ran out of the resturant, saying "thank you" and "I wasn't very hungry anyway" to whoever I met.

That was the worst EUR 2.60 I ever spent!

Fast trains, typhoons and electric toilets (Japan)

2006-10-05T18:25:00.000+10:00

Arrgh! I had just written my account of Japan when a cat from the hostel here jumped on my keyboard and deleted everything! D'oh! Here we go again...

We spent two weeks exploring Japan with the benefit of a Japanese Rail Pass which gave us unlimited travel on most of the trains, including their super fast Shinkansen, or 'bullet' trains!

We also managed to get stuck in a hostel for 2 days while it rained solid because of a typhoon! The typhoon even managed to overturn a train just 50 miles from where we were staying! Thankfully this was not on our train line, so our onward journey to Hiroshima ran as planned :-)

When we arrived in Hiroishima, we were met by Eoin Mallin's brother, Greg, who lives here with his wife. During our few days here, he and his in-laws took great care of us, showing us around the city and the nearby sights and also cooking an absolutely magnificient traditional Japanese home cooked meal. I wasn't sure what to expect when I was asked to break a raw egg into my bowl (to dip the food into) but it was delicious!

Hiroshima is, not surprisingly, quite a modern city but the highlight is the Peace Park which is situated almost directly under where the atomic bomb exploded. As well as nice grassy walkways, etc. it has an extensive museum giving you all the information you need to know (and some things you probably didn't want to know) about the bomb. At the back of this photo on the right, you can see the 'A-Dome', one of the few buildings which withstood the explosion - very errie to witness!

We also spent a bit of time in Tokyo. It was impressive when we first arrived, with all the bright lights and typical Japanese efficiency, but we soon got tired of the sheer number of Tokyo-ites who were so obsessed with their appearance and the numerous designer stores lining the streets. Everywhere we went, we saw people looking in hand held mirrors fixing their hair, or adjusting their cap so that it is just a little crooked, or whatever. Not me! It was not uncommon to see 2 or 3 people (men & women) sitting in a cafe, and rather than talking to each other, they would be 'fixing' their appearance.

Thankfully, we also got to meet down-to-earth Eric, a friend of Kate's brother, who has lived in Japan for the past 25 years. He took us out one evening and introduced us to a nicer side of Tokyo. When he heard that we had not yet sampled sushi, he had a mission! Kate actually loved it, but considering that I don't even eat cooked fish, leaving it uncooked didn't exactly make it more appealing! Anyway, I gave it a try and it was not as bad as I was expecting.

I'll finish up with a quick mention of Japanese toilets (sorry - I have no photo's!). Let me just say that if something can be automated then the japanese will do it! You can now do your business and when you're finished, you just press a button and are - ahem - cleaned. Fancier toilets even blowdry when you're all washed! And if you hate the feeling of sitting on a cold toilet seat, then fear not... you can even set your desired temperature!

Not Back in the USSR

2006-10-05T18:18:00.000+10:00

...or so the song doesn't go.

Our original plan was to re-enter Russia from China and then get the ferry to Japan from Vladivostok (the end point of the Trans-Siberian Railway). But after the welcoming we received from the Russians on our trip so far and the added hassle of getting a new russian visa, we decided to skip the re-entry idea and go straight to Japan. The extra time that would be freed up could then be used travelling in more hospitable countries!

A week in Beijing

2006-09-23T20:26:00.000+10:00

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

2006-09-20T22:07:00.000+10:00

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

2006-09-08T23:03:00.000+10:00

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

2006-09-06T00:24:00.000+10:00

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!)

2006-09-05T23:14:00.000+10:00

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!

The Trans-Siberian Railway

2006-08-24T17:32:00.000+10:00

Well here I am, about to write about the Trans-Siberian railway - the journey defining what route we would take to Australia - and I'll start by saying we nearly missed the train!

Before I get into that, let me talk about the Moscow underground... From the map in our guide book, it looks like any other underground that you'd find in any other city. However, many of the stations are superbly decorated with chandeliers ...as if you're entering a huge concert hall or something. More people use the Moscow subway each day that those who use the London and New York subway systems combined. When we first went to use it, we bought our ticket and walked through the barrier. We followed the signs for our train line (quite difficult when you don't understand russian) and before we got to the track, we met another barrier which wouldn't accept our tickets. We showed them to the attendant who laughed and shrugged it off, as if to say: well of course that ticket isn't gonna work, you foreigner! We were then directed to another queue (the russians love to queue) where we would buy another ticket for THIS barrier. Don't ask me why! We have put this on a list which we call: 'That's something that only the russians know', and this list is getting longer each day!

Anyway, after buying our second ticket we made it on to our train. We had 4 stops to go... Strangely, the train skipped the 3 in between stations and stopped at our one! Were they expecting us? Is this the norm? (only the russians know), but we were very thankful that we didn't want to get off at one of the stations in between! We found our hostel and settled in well, happy to finish a long day of travelling.

The next morning, we had a quick run through the main areas of Moscow before our lunchtime train to Irkutsk. We were slightly behind time and after getting some supplies for the upcoming journey we were leaving it a little tight. Lets just get a taxi, we decided. The staff at the hostel told us that a reasonable price would be EUR 5 and that we should definately pay no more than EUR 6.

With our bags on our backs, we set out again at 12noon - hoping we'd be there long before the train left at 1pm, and before the looming grey clouds emptied water on us! We walked to the local underground & suburban train station where we had spotted a load of taxis the day before.

Today however, there was only one taxi. We walked up to the driver and asked him how much to Kazan station (in perfect russian, of course). He sat there for a few seconds, eyeing us up and down, no doubt wondering to himself "how much can I get away with here?". "Tirr-tee dollars" he replies! We decided we'd rather risk the underground than be shafted by this guy for a journey the equivalent of going from Drumcondra to O'Connell Bridge.

Thankfully, our underground experience second time around was a lot smoother (ie. the train didn't skip any of the in between stations!). Unfortunately, the time spent navigating the subways meant it was now 30 minutes before our train left. On top of this, it had started to lash rain and so the lobby of the subway station was jam packed with people trying to keep out of the rain.

We managed to push through and into the downpour. This was the one time we needed our waterproof coats and covers for our rucksacks - and the one time we didn't have time to put them on! I had read in the lonely planet guide book that the trains can sometimes leave early and after 15 more minutes of running around in the downpour and still no sign of our station I finally thought we were gonna miss our train. Other thoughts going through our heads was that the tickets in our bag will be wet and will not be accepted by the conductor!

Amazingly we met one of the few nice russians in Moscow who ran with us to the station, and then found our train for us too. As a bonus, the conductor even accepted our wet tickets! The train left 20 mins late :-)

I had planned on writing about the train journey itself but that will have to wait till my next post (at which point, I hope to have found another internet cafe which will allow me to upload photo's).

Mother Russia

2006-08-24T17:13:00.000+10:00

We have just spent the last two days seeing the sights of St. Petersburg. We are now at 60 deg latitude - the most northerly point of our journey. We are staying at a very laid back hostel called 'Hotel California'. Apparently it is run by a bunch of musicians from a rock band, and when you press the doorbell an electronic voice in a THICK russian accent sings out 'Welcome to the Hotel California' :-) It's so laid back in fact that shortly after we arrived, the receptionist had to pop out, and asked if we would mind greeting anyone who called! Also, there's a moneyjar sitting by the computer next to me here - use of the internet costs about EUR 1.80 per hour, but payment is completely by the honour system!

Tomorrow we will travel to Moscow and then onto a 5-day train journey to Irkutsk! We had planned on only travelling a day or two at a time on the train but after booking a ticket to Yekaterinburg (only 26 hours) we realised that there were NO trains out of Yekaterinburg for about 5-6 days! In the morning, we will have to cancel our original ticket and get the longer one.If I survive the 5 day journey, I'll let you know how it went :-)

An unexpected stop over

2006-08-24T17:12:00.000+10:00

The alternative to passing through Belarus was an unplanned stopover in Vilnius (Lithuania). The downside to this was that the train left Warsaw at 7am :-( ...and I thought I was finished with early mornings! This was our first major train journey, lasting about 13 hours.

All was going smoothly until we had to change trains in Lithuania. We planned to buy a new ticket in the station, but when the first train arrived in the changeover station the second was just about to pull out! With no cash, we just jumped on the train anyway... better to be on the train explaining that we had no ticket than off the train in the middle of nowhere we thought! When the ticket collector arrived, we showed her a Visa card and were met with a look ofshock. She said something to us in Lithuanian/Polish/etc. but it didn't sound good! She disappeared and came back to us with the cleaner (who spoke pigeon english) and politely informed us that we'd have to get off at the next stop! When we suggested that we could pay when we got to Vilnius, they seemed to settle for that. When we pulled into the station, we were frog marched to the ATM by no less than 2 staff, to withdraw the train fee :-)

Poland

2006-08-15T06:39:00.000+10:00

We found our hostel fairly quickly but since it was only 6:30am our rooms were not yet available to us, So we decided to walk the streets looking for somewhere nice to have brekkie. It didn't take long to realise that Krakow doesn't wake up till a little later, so we had to settle for a coffee in a 24 hour internet cafe :-)

We settled into Krakow fairly quickly, mainly because it's a cheerful little town and the hostel we stayed in was very cosy. It was good to meet some of the other guests too, and have a bit of a conversation! On one particular evening, we were talking away when we realised it was 3am! During our time in Krakow, we also made a visit to another Concentration Camp in nearby Auchwitz/Birkenau. There's probably not much I can say that you have not heard in history class already, but what really stood out was the scale of the camp, and to see with my own eyes the extent to which the Nazi's went to, to kill people.

After 3 days in Krakow, we headed north (a little) to Warsaw. There was almost non-stop rain for our time here... some of it was like being in a rain forest... which meant we were restricted to our hostel for a much of the time :-( Our plan was to travel from Warsaw straight to Russia (St. Petersburg), but little did we know (until the last minute!) that the direct train passed through Belarus - which requires a transit visa to pass through!

Vienna to Budapest and onwards...

2006-08-12T22:13:00.000+10:00

Before I start, I should point out that my phone mysteriously disappeared from my bedside in the hostel in Munich (the joys of a bed in a dormatory, eh?). The phone wasn't worth much, and had very little credit left in it. However, it did have all my numbers in it - so don't be surprised if you get an email from me when I get to Australia, asking for your number again...
Also, if you happened to send me any texts on or after July 29th then I probably didn't get them.

The train journey from Munich to Vienna was only about 3-4 hours long and travelled through some spectacular countryside. It was like watching heidi or something... with rolling hills and picturesque little houses.

We spent 3 days in Vienna altogether but nothing really stood out about it. This could be because the weather was deteriorating or that we were comparing it to Munich, but either way, I don't have much to say about it. We spent the time walking around the city, and also went to a concert playing Mozart music - there was a city wide festival on celebrating 200 years of Mozart, so every way we looked we saw wigs!

Bratislava was on our itinirary, but we decided to give it a miss since we had both been there before, and the train journeys onwards from there would have been more awkward (we were in for a surprise!). So straight to Budapest we went.

Budapest was the first time that we had to wear our jumpers and raincoats on the trip. When we found our hostel, we were greeted to a 1900's soviet era orphanage (or similar!). All the tiles were cracked, the paint on the walls was peeling and the shower was nothing more than a spout (think 'tap'). Perhaps these are the reasons why there was still room in this hostel despite the hungarian grand prix on and all other placed booked out :-)
Budapest was nice, but the intermitted torrential rain stopped us from making the most of it. We spent 2 days walking around, dodging the showers but were ready for a change when the time arrived.

Oh, I should say that we got to try out the Thermal Baths while there :-) These are basically outdoor swimming pools, but with less emphasis on swimming, and more on just floating around. This is all the more relaxing given that the outdoor temp was about 15 deg C and the water temp was 37C :-) There were signs up telling people not to spend more than 20 mins at a time. Ever since I saw these pics of old men playing chess in the baths, I wanted to have a go. However, when I actually went to play, I was quickly told where to go (by the old men). Looks like in order to play, you need to be a grumpy old man with nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon... well I'm half way there :-)

Getting the night train from Budapest to Krakow seemed like a good idea at the time, but we hadn't fully expected the whole eastern european border crossing scenario. This is where you get passport officials dressed in full military atire - camoflage suit, boots, shaved head (and yes, guns too!) walking though each compartment on the train checking passports. And if there are 3-4 guys checking passports, then this means your passport will be checked 3-4 times. It seems the word 'delegation' has not made it this far east (?).

To add to this, the train route in question travels through two borders (Hungary/Slovakia and Slovakia/Poland) so there's twice the fun... especially when the second crossing happens around 2am and you're standing there in your pj's and bare feet, only half awake, while this big guy with a gun (x4!) eyes you up and down looking for any reason to 'make his day' (perhaps my sleepful state was playing tricks on me at this point!).

We arrived in one piece (and no holes) in Krakow at about 6am the next morning ready for bed!

Paris & Munich

2006-08-09T02:29:00.000+10:00

We stayed in Paris for 3 days altogether. For those of you who went on the ski-trip to Saint-Francois-Longchamp, it was the same hostel that we stayed in all those years ago, and yes, the pac-man mural was still on the wall opposite the hostel entrance although I declined on eating any raw eggs :-)

I had been to Paris a few times before, but never got around to doing the usual touristy things such as going up the Eiffel tower or visiting the Louve museum, so we decided that we'd do those things on this visit. We also went to a star wars exhibition that was on, which had a lots of props and stuff that were used in all the star wars films - including Darth Vadar's suit from the original 3 films.

However, one of the more exciting parts of this visit was getting engaged to Kate :-)

After our third day in Paris, we made our way to Gare de l'Est (I think!) for our first sleeper train of the trip. It was going to be the first of many so I was very interested to see what the living conditions were like! There were 6 beds in a compartment smaller than most people's box rooms! Having said that, the beds were quite comfortable.

The next morning we arrived in Munich (9 hours later) where we would stay for 2 nights.

Munich is a lovely city, made even nicer by the plentyful supply of Bratwurst (german hot dog)and 1l glasses of beer :-) I hadn't had a bratwurst since I worked as a golf caddie in America (of all places) many years ago and I wasn't disappointed when I got to sample them again.

We also made a trip to the concentration camp in nearby Dachau. On our way out there, we overheard an Irish accent (Kerry, in fact) on the bus. As it turned out, the guy was living in Munich and worked as a tour guide, so we joined his small group. I had heard before about the attrocities which took place there, but seeing the place for real was an eye-opener. Our guide (sorry, but I can't remember his name) did an excellent job of showing us around ('guiding' us, you could say).

We left Munich for Vienna on 31st July. Goodbye bratwurst, goodbye nice german beer!

The Journey Begins

2006-08-05T05:09:00.000+10:00

Ok, well over a week into the trip now and it's time to start making some proper entries to this page I suppose :-)

The countdown of the days finally got to zero! My mother dropped Kate, Fearghal and I to the airport on Tuesday 25th July (Fearghal was off to Boston for a week). It was good to say hello (and goodbye) to Caoimhe who was also in the airport, on her way to Portland.

We had a coffee and a bun but while I was hungry from missing breakfast, I couldn't eat a thing. It felt very strange knowing that when I left Ireland this time, I would not be back in a week, or a month, or 6 months... After we said our goodbyes, Kate and I made our way to the gate in realative silence.

Our first and only flight was to London and we were greeted to a scorching day! We dropped our bags off at Kings Cross Left Luggage and went wandering. It wasn't long before we came across Platform 9 3/4 (for all you Harry Potter fans), so we decided to make the most of the photo opportunity :-)

Our afternoon in London was uneventful except for being ripped off by paying about EUR 8 for two ice-creams! Lesson learned... don't buy ice-cream in Picadilly Circus! We met up with Sinead (an old friend of Kate's) once she finished work, and she looked after us for the rest of the evening.

The following day we made our way to Waterloo station to board the Eurostar train to Paris.

Photos

2006-08-03T22:59:00.000+10:00

Uploaded some photos of the journey so far onto Google's picasaweb...
http://picasaweb.google.com/kingjjj/TheAdventuresOfJohnAndKate

First draft...

2006-07-31T07:44:00.000+10:00

This is my first attempt at making a blog entry, so if you're reading it it must have gone ok! (despite the german keyboard ...and consequent weird layout!). More updates to follow...