Category Archives: Travel

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Dinner with Tang Jun – Chinese hospitality at it’s best

Catching up with friends, work colleagues, or local contacts is one of the real highlights of life on the road. Whether it is something pre-arranged or a random coincidence it gives you a feeling of normality that constant travelling often lacks. So when we arrived into Chengdu we were both quite excited about meeting up with Tang Jun.

First things first, neither Natalie or I had ever met Tang Jun before, but we were put in contact with him by one of our close friends and one of Natalie’s work colleagues. Tang Jun also helps out Natalie’s work, Oasis Overland, with organising things in China for their huge Silk Road overland adventure. We had swapped several emails and had decided to meet up on a Saturday night to go out and experience real, local, traditional Chengdu Hot Pot.

Tang Jun and his wife Wendy picked us up from our hostel and we drove down to a street filled with restaurants, “Look for a full restaurant and you know it is a good one”, Tang Jun told us. We pulled up out the front, Wendy ran in and quickly from the doorway waved us all in. With one table left there was no waiting time, a rare occasion in Chengdu on a Saturday we were told.

As we walked in, it was almost as if everyone stopped and stared, Natalie and I were the only non-locals in the whole restaurant, and this was definitely somewhere off the beaten track. We sat down, drinks were ordered, we made a toast (the first of many!) and then Tang Jun explained what traditional Sichuan Hot Pot was all about.

The town of Chongqing is most famous in China for its hot pot with Chengdu a close second. It is basically a silver bowl full of chilli, black peppercorns, several different types of oil, and even more chilli. As it boils away you then put different types of meats and vegetables into the broth and cook them to your liking. Each person has a small bowl in front of them that you fill with sesame oil, chopped garlic and coriander. The sesame oil we were told stopped your stomach getting ill from so much chilli. “You must understand, hot pot is not the healthiest meals for you”, Tang Jun laughed.

Now this is where things got interesting, a huge simmering cauldron full of a bubbling red hot liquid that looked that it had come from the bowels of hell was placed in the middle of the table. In the center was a smaller pot of clear liquid that appeared to have a full fish inside it. Natalie is without doubt one of the most intrepid travelers I have ever met, but there are a couple of things she doesn’t deal with too well. One is dead animals, two is overly spicy food, (China has helped her change her tune a little), and three is random off cuts of meat. So it was hard not to chuckle when first the pot came out and all you could see was chillis boiling away and a dead fish in the middle, but this was followed by a procession of plates of various meats and vegetables to dip into boiling bubbling broth.

Tang Jun emptied a few plates into the broth and told us they needed a little longer to cook than some of the others. He then said to me, “Try this one Dean”, “What is it?” Natalie asked, “Ha ha I will tell you once he has eaten it!”, Tang Jun responded. It was actually pig intestines and I must admit it I quite liked it. We were then treated to pig’s throat, ox stomach, meatballs, beef, what looked like spam and several types of vegetables. As the broth continued to boil away the colour got deeper and the taste got hotter.

Credit where credit is due Natalie tried everything that Tang Jun presented her with and didn’t bat an eyelid (even the fish which she hasn’t eaten for years and was more of a challenge than the offal). Even as the broth got hotter and hotter Natalie kept going, at one point I turned to Tang Jun and said, “You have made my wife do things tonight I could only dream of!” I was a very proud husband to say the least. Perhaps the spiciest little beast was the cauliflower – somehow it absorbed every chilli and spice in the pot and left even me reaching for the water!

It really was an amazing meal, all the dishes tasted great and true to form, the sesame oil negated some of the nasty effects of seriously hot and spicy food. Sadly Tang Jun was not feeling the best that night but promised to be on better form in a couple of nights time when he insisted we go out for drinks. Wendy drove us home and we reflected on our awesome local dining experience.

Two nights later we got the call to jump in a taxi and meet Tang Jun at his favourite bar, The Traveler Bar, owned by a close friend of his Mr Liu. We began with a few local beers and were introduced to the Chinese art of cheers-ing. In China you seem to cheers for everything and everything, I think it is an excuse to get drunk as quick as possible.

We were joined by a couple of his work colleagues, a young girl called Candy who had just joined the business and then his work partner or boss, we never did work it out, Mr Liu (yes another one but no relation) arrived and then the party really started. We upgraded from reasonably low alcohol Chinese beers to extremely strong Bavarian wheat beer, the best you can get, we were told.

We toasted to just about everything, new friends, old friends, the two of us being married for eight months, to China, to Tibet, to Oasis Overland and everything in between. We learnt that the host will always clink his glass lower than yours as a sign of respect, and when someone fills up your glass you tap the table with closed fist, imitating a sign of respect to the Emperor when he was in disguise travelling around. As we meet up on the 30th of December, and we were spending New Year’s Eve on a 44 hour train ride to Tibet at midnight we then toasted to ‘Happy Last Day of the Year’. For us this night was our New Year’s Eve.

When we were sufficiently drunk to our hosts liking they piled us into a taxi back to the hostel. We may have only spent two nights with Tang Jun but by the end of it we felt like we had known him for ages. His hospitality was amazing despite our pleas he would not accept any contribution towards our dinner or our night of drinking, we were his guests in his city and country. We have been lucky to do so many amazing things on this journey already, but our two nights with Tang Jun will live on in the memory for a long time to come. As I said at the start, meeting up with friends, old or new, during your travels is always a highlight.

– Dean

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Chinese ablutions

Now being British, we like to think we are very polite and we go out of our way to queue and not make impolite noises in public. Any inappropriate noise is either met with eye rolls or generally a look in the other direction as if nothing happened!

Something has baffled me since we have been in China. The ladies seem to have such high standards of personal hygiene, yet they still make such awful unladylike noises and spit everywhere. That’s just the ladies – I won’t even go there with Deans stories of what he has seen and heard!!!

Now forgive me for the topic of this blog, but I wrote this on a long distance bus journey. Shortly after getting on the bus I was nicely tucking into my pastry for breakfast. Yum…. That was until the bus driver started making stomach churning noises followed by repeated spits out the window. All of a sudden breakfast did not seem so good!

Now this behaviour is not endemic to China – indeed I think it was actually worse in Mongolia and I know from experience that it reigns supreme in other Asian countries too.

We have been staying in budget accommodation with shared bathrooms in a lot of cases. This means you witness (or hear!!) the morning ablutions of your fellow travellers. As its the ‘slack season’ as they call it, the hostels have been full of young Chinese travellers or temporary residents. In the morning it is quite common to see them literally standing in a washing up bowl cleaning their feet while vigorously scrubbing, slapping or wiping their faces. One could say this cleaning ritual means they are far far cleaner than me – not to mention a lot braver as you would not get me stood in a cold bucket of water on a -5 degree day!!!

Once you leave the hostel you run a gauntlet of spit as you walk through the streets, ducking and diving as you go to make sure you are not in the line of fire – ok I exaggerate slightly but you get the drift! Apparently during the 2008 Olympics there was a ban in place on this type of behaviour and fines were handed out to those caught in the act. I can’t help but wonder if this act of ‘throat clearance’, as I like to call it, helps or merely creates more to spit!

However far be it from me to judge a nation when I am a guest in their country. However I for one will not be adopting the ‘hoike’, spit and noises that are heard here!

– Natalie

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Chapter Three: Beijing to Yichang (including you can take the girl out of the posh, but you can’t take the posh out of the girl…..living it up on the Yangtze River)

We left Beijing with a twinge of sadness. As you have read, we loved the city and all it had to offer. The next couple of days were a whirlwind of old town walls, trains and temples!

We decided to try the ‘hard sleepers’ on the next two trains. We opted for the middle (of three story high bunks) bed within the 38 bed bunkhouse on the train – imagine rows and rows of bunks and you are not far wrong! We had read mixed reviews about these sections and so far had avoided them. However we were so pleasantly surprised with the first journey to Pingyao, that we booked the next train in this style too! With our valuables as a second pillow, we felt perfectly safe and slept like babies (on a good night!).

Now I should say booking trains in China is in itself not for the feint hearted. As the Lonely Planet says, the booking system is the “Achilles heel” of the whole train network. You need to buy your ticket at the station or ticket booth, the further in advance, the better (we have met some travellers who have been ‘stuck’ for a few days as their desired train was full). The early bird definitely does catch the worm. Needless to say the ladies at these ticket booths rarely speak English and it is a cash only system for westerners. The odd hostel can do it for you, for a charge, but not many. We had taken to looking up trains, deciding what we wanted and then asking the hostel to write us a note in mandarin detailing our request. We then headed to the ticket booth and thrust this at the ticket seller and hoped for the best. We have got this far so it obviously works!

We made it into Pingyao and checked into our dodgy little hostel for the day and set off to explore. Now the atmosphere here was odd. In the summer it may be more bustling, but it was like a ghost town in winter! The main reason we had come was to walk the town walls – famed for being one of the most intact old city walls in all of China. Quite a statement. We were impressed with what we found, and set about walking the 6km route all the way around them. It took a while with photo stops to look over the roof tops, but it was an enjoyable walk. Our ticket also granted us access to the Confusion Temple and other sites in the city – all worth a wander with the relative sanctuary of being by ourselves.

We finished our stay in Pingyao with a walk round at night. It was beautifully lit up with red lanterns everywhere. It was just stunning – needless to say a few hundred pictures were taken during our short stay! It had been well worth the pit stop. It was time for our back-to-back night train to keep on moving. Next stop Xi’an.

Xi’an surprised us. Both in size, style and sophistication. As we walked the 3km from the station to our hotel (seemed like a good idea at the time and we hadn’t discovered the 10p bus at that point!) we quickly learnt it was a big city! We checked in, and caught the first public bus out to the Terracotta Warriors.

Dad had taken me to see some of the warriors on tour in London back in the 80’s. No doubt the historical significance was a bit lost on me then, and if I’m honest I still couldn’t get my head round the age of these warriors. I can only describe the sight of them (in Pit 1 at least!) as truly amazing. Each one has a different face and lined up in rows they are quite magnificent. What I hadn’t realised was there are still excavating. This was going on in front of our very eyes which was interesting to see. Between us we got some great pictures – something that you are begging to see is a bit of a theme of our trip – photography! It would be fair to say that the Warriors appealed to the history nerd in Dean. Not only how randomly they had been discovered in 1974 but also how they had remained underground for over 2000 years. This was a big thing he had wanted to see and I must admit it is hard not to be impressed. We had read various reviews about what way to view them, and found that visiting the ‘pits’ in the reverse order worked well for us as we finished with Pit 1, the largest of the three and the image you have in your mind when you think of them. An army of warriors in various states of repair lined up in rank and file to guard the Emperor. Quite a sight!

Back to Xi’an and something struck me about this city. I deemed it the ‘Paris of China’ when I walked past the row of Maserati’s and Bentley’s parked along the main street. With Expensive Swiss watch shops and swanky clothes stores it was only when we were up on the old city walls at dusk starring down the Champs Elysees of Xi’an, towards the Bell Tower which was all lit up that this came to me. Have you been to Xi’an? Do you agree or disagree? There was clearly a lot of money in this city (as well as poverty) and the friendly people walked about with style and sophistication in the main. We were once again the focus of intrigue and photo requests. I have never been anywhere where I had been this much of a curiosity! Maybe it was our matching wooly hats!!

We had a great couple of days there going into the Drum and Bell Towers, and cycling around the old city walls. Our top tip is to go up there in the late afternoon then you can hire bikes for when the city is lit up as well as when darkness falls and all the red lanterns are turned on. It was fabulous.

As Christmas approached it was time to move on and try and sort out our Christmas trip. We took an overnight train to Chongqing with the sole aim of getting on a cruise boat down the Yangtze. We were open to offers…. Although secretly we both had a bit of luxury in mind!! We arrived at a hostel with a good travel desk and set them on the case. This was on the 22nd. They quickly came back with the options – we either left on luxury 5*+ cruise that night or we literally missed the boat (and Christmas) until the 27th. Working out the comparisons with a Chinese boat, we decided it represented far better value to ‘posh it up’ for a few days. Hostels in China had been great, but we were at the end of a three weeks stretch without hot hot water and we were in need of a good scrub. We paid our money (a bargain price) and killed the afternoon in Chongqing. It was a bustling city with a mass of building activity going on. From what we saw we weren’t sorry to be leaving later that night! I bought a “cute” (according to the boat staff!) Santa head band and armed with our stuff we walked down and boarded the boat.

This was the start of an amazing four days / three nights – wow. The Chinese dragons danced as we got on board and we were met with the glistening atrium on the Century Emerald, complete with Christmas decorations galore. I had died and gone to heaven compared to the last few weeks’ accommodation. Now the older I get the more I seem to aspire to this type of accommodation!! I blame Dean…. I mean I have been lucky enough to stay in many a posh hotel with him, so it is what I’m quickly becoming accustomed to!! We went up to our room, complete with River View balcony and lounge area and made ourselves at home. We put up our Christmas decorations and put our £5 secret Santa pressies for each other under our Russian tree and ‘de-backpackered’.

The next few days for us involved several cocktails and watching the Yangtze go by. We had three included visits along the way which we made the most of including the ShiBao Zhai Pagoda (which clung to the rock for dear life), Shennong Stream where we switched to a smaller more accessible dragon boat and the Three Gorges Dam which was interesting, sad and fascinating all at the same time. Out of 200 people on board, we were seated with one South African and six Australians – together we had such a laugh. We could not have asked for a nicer group of people to spend Christmas with – culminating in the boys and girls each singing Karaoke like locals on Christmas Eve! The weather was typically cloudy and misty for this time of year. That didn’t matter. I wanted to be on the Yangtze for Christmas and it was everything and more than we wanted. Backpacking is amazing, and I wouldn’t do trips like this any other way. Sometimes, just occasionally, you appreciate a little holiday from it, and this just totally recharged our batteries and made us raring to go again.

At the end of the cruise, we said our fond farewells and took our night train from Yichang to Chengdu, sharing a cabin with a Buddhist monk no less – what a way to spend Christmas, but it was time to look towards the Great Pandas….. More in the next chapter!

– Natalie

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Happy New Year!

2013 has been an amazing year for us. When we saw it in in style last year on a boat in Melbourne overlooking the fireworks, we could not have dreamt about what a perfect wedding day we would have, not to mention the adventures that the year has thrown up!

This year the turn of the year will fall as we are three hours into a 46 hour high-altitude train ride, taking us from Chengdu to Lhasa. As we make our way into Tibet, we are on a deadline with our Chinese visa, so we couldn’t delay the journey and in many ways nor did we want to. After coming all this way overland it seemed fitting to ring in the new year with our fellow train cabin buddies over a glass of Great Wall red (yes there is such a wine).

We wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy and healthy 2014. Thank you once again for following our adventures. We look forward to catching up with you in the not too distant future (but we don’t want it to come round too quickly!!!).

Cheers, Prost, Nazdorovje, bottoms up, and most importantly, good health!

Natalie and Dean

xx

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Final destination Beijing?

Well not quite! Bleary eyed we awoke for our final morning on the Trans Mongolian Railway and were greeted with quite possibly the most scenic day of the journey. The final two hours into Beijing were spent traversing stunning mountains and gorges and we even had our first sighting of the Great Wall. However nothing quite prepared us for our arrival into Beijing Railway Station.

It was manic! Having spent the best part of a week in the Mongolian steppe the mad crush of humanity that is Beijing Railway Station was a bit of a shock to the system. Somehow we managed to find an ATM and negotiate our first Beijing Metro ride all with our train cabin roommates in tow as their hostel was near ours and they didn’t know how to get there.

Our hostel was in a fantastic location. Situated on a lovely little ‘Hutong’ or alley way, close to some of the amazing shopping areas and only a stone’s throw away from Tian’anmen Square – it was the perfect spot for exploring around town.

Over the next few days we hit up all the major tourist attractions, first stop was Tian’anmen Square, the world’s largest public square. The first thing we noticed in Beijing was that there were Police and Military everywhere. The square is surrounded by roads but to access the square you have to take an underpass and go through security. The Soldiers doing the checks were only really interested in you if you were local, doing ID checks and scanning everyone’s bags. Amazingly after the Flag lowering ceremony at 16:45 pm the whole square is closed. It was bizarre, as soon as the ceremony finished Police vans came screaming and soldiers started forcibly moving people towards the exits!

The following day we started early with a line up to see the embalmed body of Chairman Mao, (our second wax figure after Lenin in Moscow). It was incredible to not only see how many people were lining up, but also buying flowers to lay as they walked in and it looked like we were the only non-locals doing so. It would be far to say Mao was in far better condition than Lenin. Mao was then followed by a visit to the Forbidden City, the symbol of Beijing. Temple after temple, palace after palace it really felt like a city within a city. The Temple of Heaven (both unique and beautiful), the Summer Palace Gardens and several of the famous market halls all were part of our itinerary over the next few days.

We also headed out to the 2008 Olympic Stadium, the stunning Bird’s Nest. The Olympic complex was great break from temples and palaces. However, there was something quite sad about the stadium. It looked far older than only five years, and as Natalie put it, it was almost as if you picked the stadium up there would be a ‘Made in China’ sticker on the bottom. Made to look good for the games, but not made to last. Regardless of its slightly run down appearance the engineering of the stadium is still breath taking.

Beijing took us by surprise, we were expecting a bit of a run-down city, busy, smoggy and a bit dirty. What we found was quite the opposite. We had fantastic weather, blue skies and little smog. The most surprising thing thought was how clean the city was. You were hard pressed to find a cigarette butt on the ground, amazing considering how much everyone smokes!

The other thing that took us a little by surprise was just how much of a novelty we were. At least once every day we were stopped and asked to have a photo taken with someone. Either at a tourist attraction, in a park or even with a mouth full of food at dinner, it felt like we were more interesting than some of China’s most famous sites.

We discovered, and fell in love with the people’s fondness of their parks. For us, this was the highlight of Beijing. The public parks bustled with life. Groups of people doing tai chi, playing badminton or table tennis, others performing a type of tai chi with racquets and balls, you name it people were doing it in parks. We stumbled upon rows of people playing cards, or knitting to entire choirs being led by highly energetic, microphone equipped singers. For Natalie, the highlight was all the people ballroom dancing in the parks. Bands would play, or radios were turned up and the parks were turned into massive al fresco dance halls. I was more impressed with all the locals armed with cameras. Gaggles of photographers all sporting the top of the range Canon or Nikon camera, tripod slung over the shoulder, were all stalking out the best photo spots around town. The parks were the life blood of Beijing, and probably the thing we missed most about the city.

Of course any visit to Beijing is not complete without a visit to the Great Wall. As Mao once said, “A man is not a man until he has climbed the Great Wall”. So we decided to take a day trip out to a section of the wall called Mutianyu. It was not the most touristy section of the wall but was easily accessible and had come highly recommended, (thanks Jan and Alan). Our visit also highlighted one of the great things about travelling to China in the winter, there was no one there. We got out there relatively early and for the best part of our first two hours it felt like we had the wall to ourselves. We saw perhaps another 10-15 people and that was it. It certainly lived up to the hype, we loved it, winding like a dragon over the hills and into the valleys we just wished we had more time to visit many of the other sections of the Great Wall.

So after nearly a week in Beijing it was time to head off and further explore China. Beijing has set the bar high, and we reached a new level of excitement for our journey. The Trans – Siberian was a fantastic experience, one we would dearly love to do again, but more of China awaits. Stay tuned to see what sites, tastes and experiences it has for us along the way.

– Dean

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Eating Our Way Around China

Trying the various foods of the countries you visit is one of the real highlights of travel. Certain dishes are synonymous with some countries, such as steak in Argentina, curries in India, (which I can’t wait for), and pasta in Italy. So it was with great excitement, and a little trepidation that we arrived into Beijing.

One thing that Asia has that Russia And Mongolia were lacking was street food. Having both backpacked around South East Asia before we were hoping that China would be the same. For the budget minded traveller or those on a prolonged adventure like us, street food is your best friend.

As we do, once we arrived in Beijing we hit the ground running. On our first night we headed up to the Drum and Bell towers to hunt down a small little bar nestled between the two, have a drink to celebrate arriving at our most Easterly point overland and stare upon the beautifully illuminated towers to toast our success. Well that was the plan.

Sadly for whatever reason the towers were not lit up, but undeterred we stumbled upon a small hole in the wall bar to have a drink. It was about the size of a broom cupboard but at about a pound per beer how could we say no. Luckily the night wasn’t a total loss because not far away was our main aim for the night, a street called “Ghost Street”.

Ghost Street was originally home to a small evening fresh food market, and the silhouettes of the vendors against the lantern lights made them appear like ghosts. Now a days the street is a strip of flashing neon, red lanterns and dozens of restaurants specializing in hot pot cooking. We walked the entire length and the choice was endless! You could tell which restaurants were the good ones as there were huge crowds waiting outside, huddling under gas burners snacking on sunflower seeds while they waited for their table to be called.

We finally settled in for our first local food experience. One thing we had heard about China was how spicy everything was, and that they eat EVERY part of an animal and tonight proved to be the case. The menu contained what Natalie described as ‘every type of offal’, from turtle heads, chicken gizzards and feet, sharks fin and Ox intestines, it was there. You can imagine Natalie’s face with some of the options!! We ordered a tame beef dish and a “dry pot” potato dish. Both came out sizzling hot and smothered in loads and loads of chilies. Now I love spicy food but even for me this was hot! By the end of the night neither of us could feel our mouths and we made mental notes to avoid any dish with the word “spicy” in it in the future.

Following day as we explored the Forbidden City and numerous city parks we our first street vendor experiences. As you leave the Forbidden City you are instantly accosted by hawkers selling everything from tuk-tuk rides, scarves, Chairman Mao figures to all different types of food. It was these hawkers that drew our attention. On the back of a bicycle was a foam pyramid full of skewers of various fruits covered in a type of toffee. I can’t lie, I really wanted to take a photo of this guy’s bike so Natalie bought one as I snapped away a few photos. Wow! These little things became one of our favorites. Kiwi fruit, mandarin, small miniature apple like fruits and cherry tomatoes all dipped in a hard toffee. They would become our staple afternoon snack when sugar levels were low and energy levels flagging in the afternoons.

That evening it was time to splurge. Early on in the journey we had promised ourselves to blow the budget so to speak and go out and celebrate making it from London to Beijing overland, and if you are going to splurge in Beijing it means one thing…. Duck!

Peking duck is the signature dish in Beijing, and there is one restaurant that towers above the rest, the Qianmen Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, established in 1864 and the most famous restaurant of it’s type in the city. Everyone from Fidel Castro, Pele, Sir Edward Heath and George Bush Senior to this night, The Smart Way Round have dined here. The restaurant was not only enormous but also beautiful, and looked like something straight out of the movies. We ordered our half duck with pancakes and eagerly awaited our dinner.
To make the experience all the more special, the restaurant sends a chef out to your table and freshly slices the duck up for you while you watch. The waitress then showed us how to construct your pancake using chopsticks and you are good to go. We persevered but decided that the ‘rolling with your fingers’ technique that we adopt at home is more efficient! While Peking Duck in Beijing is probably very different to what you may have experienced back home we both agreed it was well worth it!

Over the next few days we continued to try various street meals. Every morning for breakfast I would grab a plastic bag of steamed pork dumplings from a vendor near our hostel. Ten dumplings for a pound, what an awesome breakfast! By the end of our time in Beijing he would see us coming and greet us with a smile and my dumplings ready to go. Natalie tried various different things over the days including a deep fried bread stick and a pancake mixed with a fried egg, something that looked almost like french toast and some leaf vegetables. Street food was definitely the way to go.

We also fell upon a fantastic little local hole in the wall restaurant we ate at regularly for dinner. Not only was the food amazingly tasty but also incredibly cheap. A large beer (630ml) was only three Yuan or 30 pence! In fact our dinners were regularly coming in at around three to four pounds a night for two people. We were also quite the attraction, with locals asking for us to pose with them for photos and on our last night the whole family thanking us and saying good bye!

Our next stop on our China adventure was the stunning little town of Pingyao. From the moment we jumped off the train we knew we were in a small town, and it really felt we were off the beaten track. As we walked around the UNESCO Heritage listed streets the restaurant signs advertised ‘Assorted Cats Ears’, ‘Dog Meat Casserole’, ‘Sliced Donkey Meat’ and the ‘Clear Cooked Bulls Penis’. With so much choice we were never going to go hungry. We did try some fantastic corn cobs from a street vendor, bought some tasty apple chips and I tried a pretty forgettable steamed bean curd wrapped in a cabbage leaf. Needless to say, many of these options are slowly turning Natalie more and more vegetarian!

An overnight train has now bought us to the town of Xian, right in the heart of Shanxi Provence. Their specialty here is a 3.8m long noodle served in a soup or broth of your choice. That’s the great thing about Asia, if you are willing to go and look for it and prepared to go local you can enjoy some of the best food you will eat and eat for a fraction of the cost. Too many travellers (and we saw a lot of it in Beijing) only eat in their hostel or hotel because they serve “Western” food, but to get a real flavor of a city or country you have to hit the streets. China has been incredible so far, and one of our next blogs will be about what we have been up to, but for now we are of in search of 3.8m noodles!

Don’t forget to check our Instagram account for photos of our adventures in China. Thanks for the feedback to let us know Instagram is posting to Twitter and Facebook. See you all on The Smart Way Round….

– Dean

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Chapter Two: Irkutsk – Beijing (Including Magnificent Mongolia where it snows glitter from the sky)

* Please excuse any funky formatting and lack of pictures. It appears that WordPress is also on the ‘hit list’ of banned sites in China. However the app (with very limited functionality) appears to be working on my phone, but only with basic text. We are still managing to put pictures up via Instagram which should be linked to our Facebook / Twitter page – we will not be stopped!! Enjoy the next installment and sorry if it looks funky we can’t check it! N&D

After our amazing journey from Moscow (which Dean wrote about in his previous blog), we jumped off the train in Irkutsk and immediately reached for another layer! We had a few nights here to see the sights as well as get out to Lake Baikal. The city was apparently experiencing some unseasonably ‘warm’ weather which meant the ice and snow melted by day, and froze at night! Not falling over was the name of the game – one that I seemed to do better at than Dean! The main square was gearing up for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics next year, and had winter sports themed ice sculptures everywhere which I was very taken by!! The architecture in the city was great and we stumbled across these tourist walking route boards and read everyone with great enthusiasm!

We headed out to Lake Baikal and it was beautiful. We were there in a bit of an in-between season – summer activities had finished and winter ones were yet to start, so we just spent time walking around in the beautiful snow taking in the stunning views. It really was a tranquil, attractive place.

From there we jumped on the train again and tracked the edge of the Lake to Ulan Ude. Most people on the Trans-Siberian train do this leg of the journey at night, but Dean had read how pretty it was, and so had sought out a local train so we could do it during daylight hours. The water from the Lake was almost lapping at the train lines, so it was a beautiful few hours.

I think one of the highlights of the train journey came for Dean in Ulan Ude. Here there is a giant 7m high ‘bust’ (head) of Lenin. We were prepared to be either over or underwhelmed, but thankfully he was very impressive and we were so glad we had stopped. Russians think it is testament to the greatness of the man that the pigeons don’t poo on him…. the cynics say it is all down to the bird spikes sunk into the top of his head out of view that keep them at bay 😉 Throughout Russia and Mongolia we saw many many ‘Christmas’ trees – however for the local people these are put up to celebrate New Year and not our festive season. I appreciated them though for Christmas as well! As well as trees and lights, in Ulan Ude we were again treated to some ice carvings – quite the thing here. We didn’t know it at the time, but it was here that we felt the coldest but it was well worth it.

What came next was magnificent Mongolia – not only a trip highlight but also a huge country highlight for both of us which is really saying something! Such a special special place it is hard to put into words our time here. Due to visa restrictions and there only being one train a week between Ulaanbaator (UB) and Beijing, we were limited to one week here, and what a week it was. At over six times the size of the UK but with a population of approximately three million (and over half of them live in UB) it certainly lived up to its reputation for being remote in parts.

We had a couple of days in UB where we explored from one side of the city to the other – literally when it turned out there were two bus number 7’s!!! We met a lovely couple of local guys who pointed us in the right direction. The following morning we headed out to the Gandan Khild Monastery and had our first experience of the monks chanting – so relaxing. Keen to see as much as possible we then arranged to have a driver and guide from the Hostel for a few days to take us out to the countryside. We piled into our old Russian Combi van and spluttered our way out to the Hustai National Park, where we went out to spot some of the Przewalski wild horses. Originally native to Mongolia, they became extinct several years ago, but 15 creatures were reintroduced from ones held previously in zoos around the world, and it has been very successful as there are now over 300 in the wild. We trekked up hill to see them and they were stunning. It was here that I turned round to face the sun, and with the backdrop of a clear blue sky, the sun was catching the snow particles that were being blown into the air and it really did look like it was raining glitter – beautiful.

We drove on and veering off the road onto a barely marked track on the edge of the Semi Gobi sand dunes the adventure really began. We kept driving and driving in land, before eventually a couple of Gers came into view. These belonged to Bor and Yandag – a nomadic couple, who lived off the land and moved twice a year from their winter site to their summer and vice versa. This would be our base for a couple of days and we both agreed it was the most authentic family homestay we had experienced – it was just awesome. We were welcomed into the Ger and given hot milky tea (the thing to drink in Mongolia). Soon after we went out horse trekking to see the sunset and it was the most at ease I have felt on a horse for a long time. Mongolian horses have smaller legs – so maybe it was just that I didn’t have as far to fall that gave me some sort of comfort!!! Dean on the other hand was not so keen, as he puts it “horses are dangerous at both ends and crafty in the middle,” a quote he stole from a movie! That night Dean took some amazing night photos and we had flash backs to our nights ‘bush Camping’ on our Oasis Overland – only this time it was a bit nippy at night!! We wiled away the hours in the evening playing ‘Ankles’ with Yandag who seemed to have a genuine desire to not let her guests win any game! She had such a beautiful smile despite living such a simple yet hard life. Ankles was a game I quickly grew to love… however it has to be seen to be understood and my new found ‘set’ will soon be winging their way home to join the rest of the traveller tat!! ‘Ankles’ are various games of chance played with sheep ankle bones. Each side of the bone represents a different animal and the general idea is to throw certain matching combinations.

The following day we headed out to Kharkhorin City to visit a Monastery. After a day’s touring, we arrived back at camp and this time headed off on the back of Camels Lawrence of errrr Arabia style! They were huge woolly two-humped beasts and they quickly became Dean’s favourites! Unfortunately by this stage my stomach had taken a turn for the worst, so I was treated to several late night treks to the ‘facilities’. These ‘facilities’ were located 30 meters away from the Ger, and we were reminded of the golden rule of loos abroad – don’t look down!! Seeing Orion’s Belt shining so brightly in the night sky will always remind me of this special place. Staying with this family far far exceeded our expectations. There were no big tour groups there… just us. And them. Communicating in the only way we could. Words can’t describe it – we were very privileged to have been there.

We headed on back towards and past UB and went out to more of a tourist guesthouse Ger stay in Terelj National Park. The landscape changed completely and we were greeted with the rugged sights of the harsh mountain landscapes. There were a couple of puppies and I utterly fell in love with one of them – he kept shivering in the cold and so I was helping out by picking him up (although we later learnt that Pedro was indeed a Pedra!!). He would have come with us if he could…. We headed out to visit another monastery here (no we are not bored of them yet!) and then the jewel in the Crown came for Dean – a visit to the massive Chingiss Khaan Statue. Completed three years ago at a cost of 4.1millions Dollars, this 41m high stainless steel statue is immense and matches the feeling towards the great man. Most excitingly for Dean, for a small price you could go up his tail(!) and pop out on the top of his head! From there you could see the never-ending Mongolian skyline that we had become so accustomed to and loved so much. 360 degree of pure sky – we were on top of the World.

And so it was time to head back to UB after not only one of the best weeks of our trip so far, but one of my all-time best travel weeks. For us, the World is too big to keep going back to the same place and there are few places that we visit that we vow to come back to, but Mongolia is one of them. There is so much to see and do and the people are so beautiful that it is hard not to be touched by the place. We didn’t freeze, instead we found it to be quite mild… maybe we have just become accustomed to – double figures. What’s -10 degrees between friends?

I remember very vividly Anastasia, the receptionist at our St Petersburg hotel looking out of the window at the grey weather and saying very passionately and forcefully (over and over and over), “why would you want to take the train now, I mean why – look at it its grey it murky its dirty? Why would you do it now, why?” Dean could see me cringing thinking “it’s time to be quiet now…” but we have our answer. For me and for us (yes we are getting on super well despite the jokes from some people before we went that we might not!!!) this could not have been a more perfect time to come. Yes the odd thing has been closed, and yes the hours of daylight are shorter and it been cold, however we have been treated to some of the most breathtaking scenery, much of which has been covered in beautiful white winter wonderland snow. Who could ask for more? A perfect scene has greeted us and we have loved every second. Winter in Siberia and Mongolia is amazing. As one of Dean’s good friends said, if you come prepared you will love it and we did.

So our last journey on the Trans Mongolian route took 30 hours and took us between UB and Beijing. It was sad in many ways to be completing this journey and both of us are still slightly in disbelief about how far we have come! Rather than two Chinese or Mongolian cabin buddies, we were faced with one very nice Chilean guy and an Italian who showed little interest in anything other than sleeping and looking at my chest – oblivious to the fact that Dean was here and I was scowling at him in disgust!! Fortunately the views out of the window as we crossed the Gobi Desert more than made up for our lack of ‘local’ companions and with mixed emotions we pulled into Beijing raring to go with the next stage of our adventure.

– Natalie

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Thank you for your support

After the most amazing time in Mongolia (more about that in the blog to follow) we are really sad to leave this special place, but are looking forward to boarding our train to Beijing in the morning.  Internet access is likely to be a bit more ‘few and far’ between, and social media quite restricted, so we wanted to take this opportunity to say a big thank you!

Sending stories back about our trip has been different for us this time round.  In the past we have sent big round-robin emails, but this time we thought we would blog and see how that went.

I have heard numerous comments from people in the past (not always positive!) about people always putting things on Facebook and Twitter about their travels, so we thought the best thing to do would be to start up ‘The Smart Way Round’ Facebook page.  We invited all of our friends to ‘like’ the page, that way people could either opt in or out of our travel updates.  At the time it all felt rather self-indulgent and like we were promoting ourselves which was not the way it was intended at all!  In short, we were blown away with the response we got so maybe more people are interested in our travels than we first believed!

So above all this is just a big THANK YOU for your support both before and during our journey.  We will continue to post blogs were we can, although it may not be possible to post these on Facebook.  You can always sign up for email updates via ‘The Smart Way Round’ blog page, or alternatively we will be back on Social Media as soon as possible (Dean can’t be parted with Twitter for too long)!

For now, thank you and see you in China (you better pinch me as it doesn’t seem possible)!

– Natalie

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From London to Irkutsk – The First Chapter

As we travel on the Trans-Siberian train its day two, there is a blissfully perfect wintery snowy scene out of the carriage window and its time to turn our thoughts back to all the amazing things we have seen and done on this adventure so far.  As we look back we find ourselves reaching for the brake pedal – slow down its going too quickly!

There is only one way to toast a big trip!

There is only one way to toast a big trip!

The last few weeks before we went away were a whirlwind and before we knew it, we found ourselves on our first overnight train (just!).  For those of you that read Dean’s earlier blog you will know that it was a close calls that testing my ability to run with my backpack from the offset!!  Good job we had packed light!

When we woke the next morning we have travelled through three countries – from the UK through France, Belgium, Germany, and finally into Poland.  I remember Dean remarking that in many ways Poland was like the UK – full of Costa’s and Tesco’s!  I can’t deny there were definitely similarities, yet it had a character all of its own that was an amazing introduction to the trip.  Our day and night there would prove to be the first day where we walked our socks off and racked up the miles.  As we got off our train, we walked out of the station and were greeted with the mighty sight of the Palace of Culture – a big imposing building that welcomed us.  We discovered the ‘singing’ Chopin benches (that’s right – park benches that play Chopin music!), explored the buildings in the old own square, walked the Old City Walls, had a Costa coffee (why change the habit of a lifetime?!), dashed down to see the Jewish Ghetto Memorial as the sun was setting and eventually toasted our arrival with a Polish beer –  Nasdarovje!

The beautiful old town square

The beautiful old town square

Our next journey was by bus (double axel as Mum spotted in the pictures!).  It was possibly the poshest coach I have been on and came complete with cheesy chick flicks and aeroplane style entertainment system.  True to form I chuckled away at a naff film!!  After an 8 hour journey, next came Vilnius and our journey into Lithuania.  I had received many reports of what a pleasant city it is and it certainly lived up to that.  Our hostel was just outside the old city walls, so a short walk and we were down in amongst the beauty of it – you can certainly see why it is UNESCO World Heritage listed.  Lacking funds we had our first taste of noddles for dinner.  We had a full day to explore and again we walked and walked.  If this trip doesn’t tone my legs nothing will!!

The Green Bridge

The Green Bridge

We walked up the main shopping street and down to the river where we meandered along the banks and came to the Green Bridge.  Built in 1956 this is the only bridge in Lithuania that has statues on it.  Given the adornment of statues on bridges in other cites this fascinated us!  We then carried on and walked up the hill and went up the Gediminas Tower which gave us a brilliant view over the city.

The Old Town Square in Lithuainia

The Old Town Square in Lithuainia

All too soon it was time to leave.  On the way back to the hostel we came across this little local bar.  It was basically park benches outside, and I convinced Dean that it would be good to have a drink with the locals.  I was the only woman in there (apart from the lady behind the bar) but we paid our 50p and got our ¾ pint of beer.  It was so good that we thought we’d invest in the economy and have a second!!!  When we got on the train a couple of hours later, we were greeted with red velour beds and animal print blankets – it was almost like something out of a 1970’s dodgy film!!

Using up our last 50ps

Using up our last 50ps

It is fair to say that crossing borders on a night train doesn’t make for a very restful night’s sleep.  First our stop in Latvia and the Latvian border control where Dean got a stamp, and then an hour later came the Russian side.  At 4am we handed over our passport and hoped for the best.  To pass the time we had a midnight feast and tucked into our big bar of chocolate – bought to use up the last of our Lithuanian money and a great investment!  Finally we were stamped in and rolling again, and next came awesome St Petersburg.

Our cabin for the night

Our cabin for the night

We spent the next three days exploring everything from the Hermitage to St Peter and Paul Island, St Isaacs Cathedral, The Church of the Spilled Blood (my first introduction to the ornate frescos), Udel Naya flea market as well as going to an Ice Hockey game – go SKA!  We had planned to go to Swan Lake, but as it was too late in the season this made a nice alternative.  We ended right on the edge with the opposing team so we had to keep cheering for SKA so there was no confusion as to who we were wiling on!  It was no wonder the seats were both cheap and still available – no one else wanted them!!!  It was a mammoth couple of days full of taking LOTS of pictures (both day and night).  I couldn’t get over the amazing architecture everywhere – the buildings were just stunning and I was blown away.  Definitely a city to come back to!

In the Hermitage

In the Hermitage


Our last stop was Moscow before the journey onwards.  It had a lot to live up to for me as I’d loved St Petersburg.  We took one of the German built express trains between the two cities, and arrived into Moscow at lunchtime.  There is no denying that seeing St Basil’s for the first time is one of those real ‘I have made it moments’ and I was amazed by what I saw.  It is the most stunning building and really does stand up to every expectation you have about it.  We went inside and this amazed me too.  I expected a big wide open space in there, instead it’s essentially lots of smaller chambers with the most beautiful frescos and artwork.  Wow.  The next few days were spent paying our respects to Lenin (I was the first of the day in there and had it all to myself which was very eerie!), going round the Kremlin, visiting the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, riding the Metro (Dean was amazing at navigating and we managed to sneak a few pictures) and going out to the old Communist All Russia Exhibition Ground.  There was a really funky memorial to the Russian Space exploration out there which was quite unique.  We loved our afternoon out there exploring lots of the old buildings and architecture.

Wow!

Wow!

So as we got to the first of the ‘big train’ train journeys there was a small amount of sadness that we were saying goodbye to these amazing cities.  It had been the perfect start to our overland adventure, and we were well and truly on our way!

So what have we learnt?  Successful travel as a couple is much easier if you a:  tell the other person when you are hungry, b:  tell the other person know when you are tired, and c: tell the other person when you are struggling!  Follow these simple guidelines and you can’t go wrong!

Above all, in the words of an advertisement in Warsaw…. ‘Life’s Good’!

Life's Good!

Life’s Good!

–  Natalie

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Covering new ground – the adventure really begins!

When we were planning our trip, one of the really exciting parts was the journey across Siberia and the mass of nothingness…. So it feels slightly surreal that we are staring this stage of the trip square between the eyes, and we both really have mixed emotions about it.  How can it have come round already?  Are we really about to do this?  After months of planning it is actually happening!

During a stop on our Vilnius to St Petersburg journey

During a stop on our Vilnius to St Petersburg journey

I have been lucky so far.  I’ve had my own personal (Trafalgar accredited) Travel Director / travel buddy to show me around all the places we have been.  We hit the ground running in Warsaw, sought out the back streets in Vilnius, strolled around like a local in St Petersburg and rode the Metro with ease in Moscow (without Dean I think I would still be doing loops on the brown line!).  So for us, the real adventure was always going to begin when we left the comfort of where at least one of us had been before and where be both started to experience something new.  That in itself is exciting.

We (the Royal ‘we’ of course) have spent months planning this trip, pouring over train timetables and deciphering schedules, only to come up with our perfect route.  The choice of which train(s) to take was made for various reasons.  We could have split our next 72 hour journey up into smaller sections, stopping more often or evening staying on longer.  However we thought 3 ½ days on the train was long enough to get a real sense of the scales and size of the country and for us, it worked perfectly.  Besides we are travelling in winter, and some things are closed, fountains turned off and plants covered for the winter, so we had to be realistic about what we see and do. Seeing Red Square and St Basil’s with a dust of snow was magical, so for me it is a very special time of year to be here and I wouldn’t trade it for peak season for anything.

We are hoping for Animal Print covers on this train again...!

We are hoping for Animal Print covers on this train again…!

I remembering sitting on a bus from Alice Springs to Cairns, and it was one of the best things I did in Oz.  Watching cattle station after cattle station and kangaroo after kangaroo pass by reaffirmed what I already knew – Australia is a big place!  I’m sure this journey will do the same.  We have got some great stop overs on this epic journey, but first we must tackle the long first stage.

We are likely to drop at least 10 degrees along the way – and coming from a temperature of -4 today that won’t be pretty, but we are prepared.  We have our cold weather gear (not forgetting my awesome funky boots!) and our cameras at the ready.  We have our Vodka to keep us warm (!) and games to keep us entertained.  Above all we have our provisions – porridge, tea, noodles, soups etc. all to live like kings on this magical journey.  For us this is the really start of our trip, the exciting venture into the unknown and we can’t wait to get going… but we don’t want it to go too quickly!  Dean remembers talking to me in Africa and apparently I said to him that the next and last big trip I wanted to do was the Trans-Mongolian Train across to Beijing.  I don’t remember that conversation and neither of us knew at that point we would be doing it together!

All set and ready to go!

All set and ready to go!

So all that’s left now is to hope we end up with good cabin buddies on the train… who don’t make us drink TOO much Vodka. See you on the other side of / in Siberia!!!

–          Natalie