Our Trip

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Our Trip
30/6


Well this is my first email. Hopefully there will be more to come, depends on how lazy I get. I'm leaving for Thailand in 2 days time. For those who don't already know, Cynthia and the kids left 2 weeks earlier and have been enjoying the sun and swimming on an island somewhere in Thailand. ( can't remember the name ). I'm realy starting to get excited now, as I'm getting all my things organized and I have more time to think about the trip.

Once I get there we're going to try and organize our visas for China. We weren't able to get them in Oz as the embassy here wanted us to have return tickets and of course, we didn't have that.

We may be able to purchase cheap return tickets in Thailand if we need to however, we've been told that the embassy there is not so strict. Cross our fingers and see how we go.

Once that's done, we're off to Vietnam then overland to China. We need to be in Beijing by the 1st of August as we have an apartment there for a month.

After that, who knows? I'll keep you posted.

That's all for now, unless you want to hear about my boring time here in Melbourne. That should put you to sleep pretty quick. Once on the road, I hope to keep all updated with all the exciting things my family and I will be up to.

3/7

Got into Bangkok last night, today out shopping. Everything so cheap here! Going to the cinema to watch Hancock Gold Class (sofa with free drink and blanket) $10.00 only. Top of the range Plasma TV $3,000.

I'm having a great time so far. Couldn't get the visas for China so we're going to Vietnam in a couple of days to try there.

Cynthia and the kids are well, the boys are already seasoned travellers! They really know thier way around here. They change money for us and ask for directions. Super confident, great to see. Means I don't have to do anything. Just sit back and relax.

I'm wiriting this email from a hairdresser while Theo's getting his hair cut. They provide free internet as part of the service here.

Got to go now, I'll write again soon.

9/7

Well now we are in Hanoi Vietnam, arrived today. Had a great time in Thailand, spent a lot of our time at the cinema watching movies. Fantastic cinemas and even better prices. On our second last day in Bangkok, we hired a taxi and visited the floating market about an hours drive out of the city. Very interesting, just a bit touristy. When we got back to the city we hired a tuk tuk, which is a motorised rickshaw, who took us on a 3 hour tour of some of the more interesting temples in Bangkok. Only only cost us $2.00 all we had to do was visit a couple of shops where the driver of the tuk tuk gets a coupon for petrol every time he brings tourists. We just had to spend about 10 min in the shops and didn't have to buy anything. That night the kids ate Big Macs at Mac Donalds, I decided to see what I could eat from the street stalls. I had boiled bird's eggs in batter. Very tasty, they tasted a lot better than they looked. I bought a beer from the local seven eleven, sat on the footpath eating bird's eggs, drinking beer and watching the people go by, Heaven!!

The next day, we had lunch at the home of a Thai friend we know from Melbourne. It just so happened she was visiting her family here. She took us to see the golden buddha. 5 tons of solid gold. I have to say, this was the most impressive buddha I have ever seen.

When deciding to travel to Vietnam, we considered taking the overland route through Cambodia. It meant taking a train to the border, then private car through Cambodia over very bumpy roads and then on to Hanoi Vietnam by train again. This would have taken a couple of days to do and sounded like a lot of fun, but we thought it might be a bit hard on the kids, so we flew to Vietnam instead. Only cost us about $100 more but less interesting.

We still haven't got our visas for China yet, we were considering buying a train ticket from Hanoi to Beijing but they don't sell return tickets. We need return tickets so we can get out Chinese visas. The people at the hotel we are staying tell us they can organise Chinese Visas for us. Tomorrow we'll see what they can do.

We plan to spend about a couple of weeks here in Vietnam, lots of things to see and do. The short time we've been here, we've already fallen in love with the place. Craziest motorbike riders I have ever seen. Kids are a little sad because there is no Mac Donalds or Seven Eleven. This means they have to eat the local food (poor kids!!).


11/7

Well it looks like we may have our visas for China! We'll know by Wednesday.

Here's the story.

The receptionist at the hotel we are staying told us she can organise our visas for us "no problem", so we let her try. She came back the same day saying that the Chinese Embassy will only give visas to Vietnamese nationals. OMG what are we going to do now?!!. We decided that I should go to the embassy the next day and ask them to see if this was true. To cut a long story short, I was told that we can have visas as long as we have a return ticket or a ticket out of China. Great news! That day we went to a local travel agent and we found bus tickets that will take us all the way to Hong Kong through China. They only cost $69.00 US each. We bought the tickets and went back to the embassy yest. They advise this should be OK and to pick up our passports Wednesday.

Our plan now is to jump on the bus, and get off in Guanghzou China which is near the border before we reach Hong Kong. From there we'll travel to Beijing. If they don't let us off the bus, we'll continue on to Hong Kong and then try to get into China from there. I don't expect that they will make us stay on the bus though. Cross our fingers!! I think we're almost there!

Had a little bit of a scare yesterday. While we were in the queue at the embassy, I realised I needed some photocopies. I found a guy on the street with a motorbike who agreed to take me to get the copies. Theo also needed to go to the toilet, so I decided to bring him along. So three of us on a small motorbike riding like Dodgem Cars! When we got to the photo copy place, I told our rider that Theo needed to use the toilet. He said no worries, I take him! So he took off with my son leaving me behind! I'm thinking, "What have I just done? I just let some strange guy on a motorbike take off with my son! If he decides not to come back, there's no way I'd be able to track them down! I got my copies and waited for them to come back. I have to say, that was the most nerve racking 2 minutes of my life! He came back. He had taken Theo to a park where there was a public toilet. I think I'm going to be a bit more careful in the future though. Travelling with kids means you have have to take a lot more precautions than you normally would.

While we're waiting for our visas, we are going to visit a place called Ha Long Bay. We will spend 1 night and 2 days on a traditional Vietnamese Junk swimming and kyaking. Sleeping on the Junk should be a great experience.

Back on Wednesday, hopefully pick up our visas and then on to visit Saigon and from there spend about 5 days on the beach in the south. Back to Hanoi by the 29th July to catch our bus to Hong Kong.

That's it for now, I'll write again as soon as I can. I the meantime, write to me and let me know how you are all doing. I'd love to hear from you all.


16/7
We just picked up our Chinese Visas today! Finally! They have given us 30 days single entry which is OK, would've liked more but who are we to complain?

Got back yesterday from Ha Long Bay, beautiful spot but very hot and muggy. Had to sleep on the roof of the boat because the cabins were too stuffy. Then it started to rain, so we had to go back to the cabin, Didn't sleep very well.

We were a little disappointed with the tour. They had promised Kayaking and swimming. Kayaks were only 30 mins and they told us if we wanted to swim, we could dive off the boat, but only before 7:30 in the morning, they explained it was gov regulations.

Tonight we are off to Hoy An, a small beach town. We are taking an overnight "sleeping bus". We are hoping this means the seats are fully reclinable as it's an 8 hour trip. I'll let you know how this goes.



20/7


Well let me tell you, the Sleeping Bus was a surprise! It was truly a Sleeping Bus. Instead of seats, it had bunk beds! Three rows of double bunks running along the bus (They call the normal buses "Sitting Buses"). Very comfy, I'll post some photos on my Facebook as soon as I can.

We didn't get to Hoi An, we decided to got off at Hue instead. This town is near the Demiliterised Zone of the Vietnam War. This place suffered a lot during the war.

On the first day, we hired three motorbikes and two guides. I drove one of the bikes and the guides the other two. Cynthia and Theo rode with the guides and I had Rio. We took a half day trip around the countryside visiting farms, museums and temples. We got to see how rice was harvested and prepared. I had a ball riding the bike, got a bit sunburnt though as I was only wearing a T-shirt and shorts. This cost us $20.00 all up. Great value!

The next day we took a tour to visit the tunnels the VietCom had built and lived in during the War. We also visited Khe Sanh which was a large American Base and also the scene of quite a lot of bloodshed at the time. Along the way we saw discarded tanks and still quite a few bomb craters. Our guides told some horrific stories, very sobering.

Today, we plan to visit the old Citadel in the town, we're going to hire bikes again as it is so cheap and fun. Then we jump on the sleeping bus tonight to go on to Hoi An.

23/7

Hoi An

Today, we got up 5:30am with our Swedish friends, Karl & Frida, to go bike riding. The kids stayed in the room, they didn't want to get up so early. Had to wake up the hotel staff to unlock the front doors and get our bikes out. Poor guys, they were sleeping on the lobby floor.

We wanted to be out early otherwise the heat is unbearable by about 9:00am. We rode along the river on the outskirts of Hoi An and came across a lady who offered to take on a tour of the river on her boat. She charged us just over $2.00 for all of us.The boat however, was more of a canoe, the four of us barely fit in it and it kept rocking threatening to capsize, scared the shit out of Karl. Kept making funny noises each time the boat rocked. "Whoaa! Eeek!"

The river was huge. It looked more like a lake. At times we hit shallow sandbanks and had to get out and wade. Our boat lady took us to watch the locals fishing in the lake. It was fascinating to watch. The fisher people were often a husband and wife team, they would set up a net in a small arc. Then, herd the fish toward the net by dragging a rope with sea shells attached to it. The shells would rattle and scare the fish into the net.




24/7
Tonight we're leaving Hoi An for Nha Trang. The snorkelling is supposed to be good there. We really wanted to leave last night but there were no tickets. Time is running short as we need to be back in Hanoi by the 29th at the latest. Our bus for China leaves on the 30th and we can't afford to miss it. Here even short distances take forever to reach. For example, Nha Trang is only 530 kilometers from Hoi An but the bus takes 12 hours to get there. Good thing we've got a Sleeping Bus.

This means we'll only have 2 or 3 days at Nha Trang before we have to leave. We won't make it to Saigon, even though we have tickets. 'We're giving those tickets to Karl and Frida, so at least they won't go to waste.

Today we're relaxing by the pool and watching movies in our airconditioned room at the hotel until the bus company comes to pick us up. One of the great things about travelling by bus here is that the bus company picks you up from your hotel. You don't need to make your own way to the station. In some cases the bus itself comes to your hotel. At your destination, if you have pre booked your hotel, the hotel will pick you up. It makes things so easy, especially when you're travelling with kids.

Funny story, on the way to Hoi An, we weren't really sure when to get off the bus as it was continuing on to Saigon. We thought the staff on the bus would tell us as we had told them where we were going. At one point Rio needed to go to the toilet and the one on the bus wasn't working. I asked the driver if he could stop because Rio was busting and wouldn't be able to hold on much longer. The driver told me that we were stopping at the next town for 5 minutes and it wasn't far, so we decided to wait. When we got to the town and I got off the bus with Rio, there was a local there holding up a board with my name on it. It was the guy from our hotel. We had arrived in Hoi An. If Rio hadn't needed to go to to toilet, we would've just stayed on the bus, not seen the guy and missed our stop. Thanks Rio!



25/7

Reached Nha Trang 5:30 in the morning. Couldn’t believe my eyes! Driving along the beach it was full of Vietnamese tourists. Swimming, lying on the beach, playing badminton, strolling, exercising. At 5:30 in the morning! By about 8:30am the beach was deserted. It seams that this is the best time in the day for the beach as it way too hot during the day. In the evening, by about 4:00pm, they’re out again ‘till late at night.

At 8:30 we took an all day snorkeling trip. The trip only cost $6.00 per person so we weren’t expecting much. As it turned out, we had a great time. The snorkeling itself was pretty average, the equipment was cheap Kmart quality and they only supplied masks and snorkels. No flippers. It was a full day trip from 8:30am to 4:00pm island hopping with lunch, snorkeling and a visit to an aquarium. The atmosphere on the boat was great though, the crew got a band together with some rusty old drums, and a guitar. They weren’t too bad. The best part was the happy hour. We had a “floating bar”. The crew threw life savers into the water, we all dove in and sitting on the life savers, drank cheap Vietnamese wine which tasted like vinegar. Even the kids got to drink some wine, the crew were quite happy to let them drink.

“How old are you?”
“10?”
“No problem, you can drink”

It was quite an experience, sitting on a life saver, in Vietnam, drinking cheap wine.

26/7

Today, tried to book tickets for the train back to Hanoi. The train was booked out. The sleeping bus was out of the question as it would take 2 nights and 1 day to reach there and we didn’t have time to break the trip up. We need to be in Hanoi by the 29th at the latest as our bus for China leaves on the 30th.
So we decided to fly instead. The only tickets available were with Jet Star, VIP class, flying on the 29th. Tickets were $100.00 each. We think VIP class means first class, we’ll find out when we fly. Flying out on the 29th means we have more time here in Nha Trang. As it turns out though, Rio’s got an ear infection. We took him to the doctor who prescribed him antibiotics and ear drops. Means he can’t swim though, and that’s pretty much all there is to do here, swim, and we’ve already booked tickets to go to a water park. We need to see the doctor again on Monday to check Rio’s progress because flying will also be a problem if he still has the infection.
It turns out that Rio had the pain in his ears since Hoi An but didn’t tell us. He only told us last night as the pain was getting worse.





27/7

It’s now early morning Sunday, while I’m writing this. We don’t plan to do much today. We were going to go to a nice restaurant for lunch. The restaurant has a swimming pool and we were planning to eat and then relax by their pool. However, with Rio’s infection……..
Anyway, that’s all for now, anyone wants to write to us, feel free, love to hear from you.

28/7

Rio’s ear infection seems to have cleared up.

Today we went to Vinpearl Land in Nha Trang. It’s an amusement park with Water Slides and Rides. Located on a nearby island in the bay, you reach it by a Cable Car which runs 3.3 kilometers over the bay to the island. It’s supposed to be the longest cable car over sea in the world. Built by a French company, the pylons were designed to look like miniature Eiffel Towers. $20 entrance fee included all rides. The slides were pretty good but the most fun were the dodgem cars. Vietnamese people are crazy drivers on the road, but put them in a dodgem car and they’re fearsome! No rules. There seemed not to be any regulated direction for you to drive. You basically did what you wanted, the attendants couldn’t care less. The cars were fairly new and therefore reasonably fast and head on collisions seemed to be the main aim. It was brutal, but so much fun! The kids couldn’t get enough of them. As soon as the ride finished, they would run around and get straight back on again.







29/7

Flew to Hanoi today.

Jumped in a taxi to take us to the airport, thinking it would be just up the road. Turns out it was in another town an hour’s drive away.

Taxi cost us $30!


30/7

We got on the bus in Hanoi for China and met a couple of guys, Xing and David.
Xing is Chinese who speaks English and David is English who speaks Chinese.
They were getting off in Nan Ning China which is our first stop once we’ve crossed the border. They were taking a train from there to Shanghai. They convinced us to get off in Nan Ning with them and take a train from there to Beijing. This way they could also help us purchase the tickets. This was an offer too good to refuse!

Crossing the border to China was a bit of a hassle. Got the 3rd degree from Chinese officials who went through our laptop computers with a fine tooth comb. Otherwise, not too bad.

Soon after, the bus stopped at a petrol station to fill up. We saw a caged truck loaded with live pigs. The driver was hosing them down so we decided to get out and watch. There were so many pigs crammed in the back of the truck, they could barely move. The kids found it fascinating.
Suddenly, while we were watching, the driver jumped on the back of the truck, pulled out a knife, slit the belly of one of the pigs and then proceeded to jump up and down on it.
The kid’s fascination turn to disgust, blood everywhere, and we couldn’t work out why he did that.
My only guess is that the pig had died earlier and was beginning to bloat. Slitting the belly would let the gasses out and stop the corpse expanding. Whatever the explanation, it certainly put us off our lunch.

Arrived in Nan Ning and immediately went to the train station with Xing, David and Glen (an American guy who we also met on the bus. He was going to Shanghai). Tried to get tickets to leave that night for Beijing but there were none available. The only available were normal seats (no sleepers) on the 1st August. They told us if we came back the next day, sleepers may become available. Xing and David had already found tickets to Shanghai for that night so we decided to buy the seats as we wouldn’t have the guys the next day to help us out and no one at the station spoke English.


31/7

Spent the day in Nan Ning. Not much to see or do, except eat.

Food was great.


1/8

Got on the train, departing 9:10am arriving in Beijing midday 2nd August. 27 hours!!
The seats were padded but not reclinable. This was promising to be an interesting journey to say the least! I was concerned about the kids and how they might handle it, but they did OK. Cynthia had downloaded audio books onto their ipods and being a train, they were able to get up and walk around. The kids spent their time listening to their audio books and exploring the train.
That night, everyone on the train tried to accommodate themselves as best as they could to get some sleep. The train was full, and people were sprawled everywhere. In the aisles, under the seats, on top of each other, the area connecting the carriages. The scene looked like the aftermath of some bizarre massacre.

2/8

Theo’s birthday today.

♫♪ Happy birthday to Theo ♪♫

Arrived in Beijing. Finally! Eric, the owner of the apartment we were renting, was at the station to pick us up and drive us to the apartment.

The apartment is fantastic! Top floor of an eleven storey building, 2 bedroom double storey, study, huge balcony, large flat screen HD TV and almost 360 degree views!

Eric took us to lunch, and then we slept. Nice comfy beds!

3/8

My birthday today.

♫♪ Happy birthday to me ♪♫

Beijing is an amazing city! Modern, enormous, crowded and with air pollution you can cut with a knife.

I now realise what it must have been like for my parents when they first arrived to Australia from Greece and not speaking the language.

Where we are staying is basically an outer residential suburb with no tourists and where very few people speak English.

I went to the supermarket to buy some shampoo and I got conditioner instead! Couldn’t read the labels. I bought what I thought were a couple of cans of beer. What I got was some bitter tasting concoction which I was later told was a kind of herbal drink which aids in prolonging your life.

I would rather die early and drink beer instead!

We went to a local restaurant, the menu was in Chinese (obviously) and the waitress didn’t speak English. So we went for pot luck, pointed to some items on the menu and hoped for the best.
The food turned out to be really nice, basically different meats on skewers. We got up to leave feeling quite satisfied with ourselves when the waitress came running over waiving her arms about.
One of the diners who spoke English told us there was still one more dish to come.

“What is it?’ we asked.

“Chicken Head” he said.

“Chicken head?!!.... But we don’t want chicken head!’

“But you ordered it!”

“Yeah…but we don’t like chicken head!”

“But you ordered it!”

“You can have it if you like” I said

“No way!!”

We walked out of the restaurant before they brought it out, so we don’t know what happened to that chicken head.

4/8

The people here have to be one of the friendliest we’ve met. Our boys are especially popular with the females of all ages. Girls keep coming up to them, hugging them, kissing them and having their photo taking with them. They boys hate it. They don’t realise, when they get older, they will be begging for that same attention.

Went to a traditional market in the centre of town where can buy all types of fried food on skewers. Food such as beetles, sea horses, scorpions and other weird looking bugs (see my Facebook for some photos).

Getting around in Beijing is a breeze with the new subway system. Tickets are easy to buy from machines and very cheap ($0.30 AUD). Funny thing though, if you should insert your ticket into the turnstile incorrectly, it spits it back out at you but throws it about a meter behind you. This means you have to run back pick up the ticket and try again. Once my ticket got rejected three times in a row. There was a big queue of people behind me and they had a great time watching me each time, running to retrieve my ticket like a dog fetching a stick.
It might have been my imagination, but I was sure the machine made spitting noises each time it threw my ticket out.

11/8

Well it’s the 11th of August and we’ve been in our apartment for a week now. Not doing much, just relaxing and enjoying the rest.

Our apartment is in a complex of about 35 eleven storey buildings like ours. The complex also has an entertainment centre with pool tables, table tennis, kung fu and ballet classes. We understand there is also a swimming pool here, but we haven’t found it yet.

We played some pool and then tried our hand at table tennis. Table tennis is very popular in China, it may even be the national sport. When we arrived at the tables to play, we found that most of them were occupied by young kids training with their coaches. They were amazing to watch, 6 to 10 year old kids playing at a level that would put anyone I know to shame. The coaches had a large bucket on the table filled with balls and would fire them at the kids in rapid succession. It was very similar to the way tennis is taught in Australia. We spent more time watching the kids train rather than play ourselves.


There’s an IGA supermarket here. It’s very similar to the ones in Australia except the Asian section takes up 99% of the store (funny about that).
We’ve been trying our hand at Asian cooking. So far, we haven’t done too badly. A couple of times we’ve bought things thinking they were one thing and turned out to be something completely different. This is because we often have to rely on the pictures on the packaging to work out what it is. It reminds me a Vietnamese friend whose father once bought a packet of Corn Flakes thinking it was chicken.

Most mornings, in a little park across the road, there is a small group of older citizens playing traditional instruments and singing what sounds like Chinese Opera.
Maybe it’s my untrained ear, but I don’t think they’re very good. There’s a guy with a one stringed violin type instrument (called a Huqin) which sounds like a cat being skinned alive and the singer howls like he’s in great pain.
I’m starting to get used to them though. I’ve been going down most mornings while Cynthia and the kids are still asleep. I buy some cakes from the local bakery and watch them play. They are starting to grow on me.

Rio’s ear infection has gone, but now he has another problem. It turns out that he’s had a wart on his foot which has been growing. He’s had it since Australia but now it’s beginning to bother him while walking.
We took him to a local hospital but they refused to see him so we went to an international medical centre located in an expensive Swiss hotel. They wanted to charge us $100.00 US just to look at it. Our insurance company wouldn’t guarantee payment until they saw the medical report. This meant we would need to pay first and hope the insurance will accept it. We decided instead to try the Beijing Children’s Hospital. That was a cultural experience in itself!

The hospital is divided into specific departments or sections. The surgery department, dermatology department, bandage removal department, bandage application department and so on. In other words, for almost every medical procedure, there was a specific department for it. When arriving at the hospital, you needed to tell reception exactly what you required, the receptionist will choose the department, write out a slip which you would take to a cashier to pay. The cost would depend on the procedure required. Once you’ve paid, you then proceed to that department with your receipt to be seen by doctor. If any medication is required such as anesthesia, bandages etc. the doctor would write a script, you would then need to go to another cashier, pay, and then proceed to the pharmacy where they would give you the medicine to take back to the doctor.

We were able to work all this out using a lot of hand signals and some of the staff, especially the doctors, spoke a little English.

Cynthia had told reception that there was something on Rio’s foot which needed to be taken off. The receptionist referred us to the surgery department apparently thinking there was a foreign object in his foot. In fact, we really needed the dermatology dep. We were told we needed to go back to reception and pay again for the dermatology department. After some discussion though, we convinced to doctor in dermatology to accept the surgery receipt. The doctor told us they will need to burn the wart off, she got me to get some anesthesia and some cream to put on the wound afterwards.

The doctor basically burnt the wart off with what looked like a soldering iron. The only pain the Rio suffered during the process was when they injected the anesthesia. It didn’t take long to heal after that. The whole process cost us under $20.00 including the medicines.


Now we are going to see if we can get some Olympic tickets. All events are sold out, but you can often pick some up if you wait at the entrance about a half an hour before the event starts. Tonight we’ll see if we can get into the women’s basketball. Australia v Brasil.

12/8

Couldn't get tickets for the Basketball last night, but we did find tickets to the Boxing. There were two Mexican contestants. Paid 4 times the ticket's value, about $17.00 each, from scalpers just outside the venue. Bargained them down from $45.00. As it turns out, tickets for all events are totally sold out. Most of them were purchased by locals who are scalping for a profit. This is the only way you can get tickets now. The scalpers don't get to sell all the tickets which means when you get inside, there are a lot of empty seats. The tickets we bought were not together, they were spread out, but once we got inside we were able to sit where we wanted, the attendants didn't care, so we sat in some reasonably good seats.
The boxing was fun, while the Mexicans were competing the Chinese spectators sitting with us helped us cheer them on.
We were shouting, "Mexico! Mexico! Ra! Ra! Ra!" and the Chinese were shouting "Mexico! Mexico! La! La! La!" They had a bit of a problem pronouncing the letter R. But then it was our turn. The Chinese started shouting "Mexico! Chaiyo!" Chaiyo means something like "Come on!" So we started shouting that too. That got a lot of laughs from the Chinese. We couldn't say it right, they tried to teach us how to say it but they were laughing too much. All in all, it was a good night.

13/8

Tried to get into the Beach Volleyball. No tickets. The venue for the Beach Volleyball is inside a kind of theme park with rides and activities, so we spent the day in there and had a pretty good time. There was a very interesting sound and light museum run by Sony. Kids really enjoyed it.

14/8

We’ve got a system going in the restaurants now. We pick a restaurant which already has a few diners eating. We then choose what to order by looking at what the diners have on their table. When the waitress comes to take our order, Cynthia would take her by the hand, take her to a table and point to the food.
This works well, though it tends to startle the poor diners.
They would suddenly stop, chopsticks halfway to their mouth, and stare at Cynthia pointing at their food.
They must think foreigners are really weird.

I had some problems with my passport. My photo is not very good and doesn’t really look like me. I decided to go to the Australian Embassy and get a new one. This is going to take about 7 to 8 days. The problem with that, is that we need to leave China by the 29th August. We are planning to go to Mongolia and the visa for them takes about 5 days to be issued. I will probably get my new passport by the 22nd, which is a Friday, or maybe the 25th. This won’t give me much time to get the Mongolian visa. We are going to try and get an extension on our Chinese visas this Monday. We’ve been told though, the Chinese gov is not extending any visas right now. Failing that, we will try and get the Mongolian Embassy to issue their visa quicker. I think this can be done if you pay extra.

15/8

At the entrance to our apartment complex, we’ve noticed guys sitting in their cars all day. We found out that they are unmarked taxis with no meter. We’ve organized with one of them to take us to the Great Wall this Tuesday. This will cost us about $90.00 AUS which is actually cheaper than any tour available. Better yet, we have a private driver who can take us to parts of the wall where there aren’t as many tourists. I’ll let you know how we go.

16/8

Went to see an Acrobatic show performed by children ranging in ages from 4 years old, to about 10 or 12 years old. They were fantastic, as good as any professional acrobat I’ve ever seen! A couple of them did fall though, but that made it even more exiting. You didn’t know whether they would succeed or not. Nail biting stuff!

When we got out, we noticed a huge building across the road. It was lit up and people were rollerblading at the entrance which had a large flat area. We went over to have a look and we were approached by a scalper who was selling tickets to the performance inside the building. We didn’t know what the performance was other than the fact that it had already started. We bargained the ticket price to half its face value and went in to have a look. This happened in front of the attendants who didn’t seem to have a problem with this. They were quite happy to accept our tickets. The performance turned out to be some kind of modern Chinese opera. The theatre was full, and the audience was really getting into to it, singing along with the performers. Had a great time.

18/8

Tried to extend our Chinese visas today, we were told that if we wanted to stay another month, we would need to open a Chinese bank account and deposit the equivalent of $100.00 US per day for each of us. That means we would need to deposit $12,000.00 US. We were not prepared to do this. This meant staying longer in China was out of the question. As it turned out, the Australian Embassy called me to advise that my new passport was ready to be picked up. Now had enough time to get our Mongolian visas.

19/8

Went to the Mongolian Embassy to apply for our visas. We were told it would take 1 day and would cost $80.00 US each. We asked if we could have the cheaper version which takes 5 days to approve. They told us that was only for Chinese nationals. We had no choice but to pay the fee.

20/8

Picked up our Mongolian visas today and booked tickets for the train to Ulam Bataar, the capital of Mongolia. 30 hour train ride. This time we’ve got a 4 bunk cabin, shouldn’t be too bad. Still a long trip though.

Cynthia has found a place we can stay where we will sleep in traditional Mongolian tents called Gurs. It’s out of the city in the Steppes or the desert, I’m not sure exactly where. It’s run by a family and we’ll get to ride horses and maybe even learn how to train wild horses. It sounds really exiting, however we are relying on information Cynthia got on the net so we’ll see what it’s like when we get there. Cynthia has booked the place online and apparently they’ll pick us up from the train station when we arrive (at least we hope so!).
I don’t know if we’ll have any internet connection there. We’ll just have to wait and see.

21/8

Kite flying here in Beijing seems to be very popular, especially with the older men. You will often see kites high in the sky all over the city. They fly them from everywhere, even from crowded street corners. They take it very seriously, some kites fly as high as 1,500 meters (according to the lady in the Kite shop). They use special reels which they strap on their shoulders much like the Marlin fishers. They even fly them at night, the kites have coloured flashing lights, they look amazing up in the sky. One evening last week, as we were coming out of a theatre, I saw them for the first time. Not knowing what they were, for a moment I honestly believed I was looking at UFO’s!
We bought a couple of kites for the kids but we’ve been unable to get them in the air. The locals make it look so easy.

22/8

Wanted to go the Great Wall today but it was raining. I took the kids into town instead and treated them to McDonalds. Theo got some kind of stomach virus, probably because he didn’t wash his hands properly before eating. Have to be so careful sometimes.

24/8

Tried to get the Chinese Public Service Bureau ( Immigration Office ) to extend our visas for one extra day. Because Theo is ill, we wanted to change our train tickets to Saturday the 30th, our visas expire the Friday before.
They would not do it, they told us it would take 5 days to approve the extension and there was not enough time. It didn’t seem to matter that our son was ill.

So we’re leaving on the 26th, regardless.

25/8

We are planning to go to the Great Wall today (being our last day here, we have to). Because Theo’s been ill, we haven’t been able to get there. We hope he’s well enough today. He hasn’t woken up yet, but I think he should be OK.

Last night we watched the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games on TV at home. We then went out onto our balcony to watch the fireworks from there. We had a great view of them from there. Priceless!!

Funny story. When Cynthia originally organized the apartment with Eric, the owner, she sent him photos of us. At the time the boys had long hair. Eric thought they were girls. When we arrived at the apartment, we found the boy’s beds were made up with pink sheets! Eric had also supplied pink slippers for them wear around the apartment. They boys were not impressed.

We finally got the Great Wall of China today!

We got a private car to take us there. The driver didn’t speak English so he rang a friend who could, and we organized everything through her on the phone. She told us that because the car was not a registered taxi, if we got pulled up by the police, she asked that we tell them we were friends of the driver going out for a drive. We wondered how believable that story would be. Considering our driver didn’t speak a word of English and we only know three words in Chinese between us. Hello, thank you and rice (good words to know, very useful!). Every time we drove by police, I had the urge to duck for cover but I thought that might look too suspicious.

The Wall was amazing, even the kids were super impressed! Because we had a private car, we were able to go to a part of the Wall where the tour buses don’t go. There were still a lot of tourists though, they came in registered taxis (they didn’t have to hide from the cops like us!). I could imagine how crowded it must be in the touristy part.

This part of the Wall was high on a hill so you needed to reach it by cable car. The best part though was that you had two options for coming back down. The cable car again, or a toboggan run. Yes, that’s right! Toboggans on wheels, and it’s a long way down and quite steep in places. You can really get a good speed going. The toboggans had brakes and there were staff along the way who would warn you if you were going too fast. I got quite a few warnings. Crashed into the back of Cynthia a couple of times too, she kept slowing down for no reason!

Not very culturally enriching, but boy it was fun!

The Wall itself was incredible. It stretched out in both directions as far as the eye could see, up and over mountainous terrain. What must it have been like to build something like this in those days. I had trouble building a small brick letterbox back home, these guys built 6,700 kilometers of this Wall!

Off to Mongolia early tomorrow, really looking forward to it.


26/8
Theo is well now.

Train to Mongolia was pretty good, we had a 4 bunk cabin. The bunks were hard but comfortable enough. A lot better than the last trip from Nan Ning to Beijing. We had bought some chocolates and crisps for the trip thinking that we’ll buy food on the train. The taxi to the station however, cost us more than we expected which meant we had no Chinese Yuan by the time we got on the train. This meant we had to survive on chocolates and crisps for the next 30 hours. The kids seemed to be quite happy about this.

The trip was fairly uneventful except when we got to the Mongolian border. We arrived there at about 11 in the evening, Chinese customs officers came on the train, took our passports and told us we will be here for about 3 hours. We decided to jump off the train and have a look around. Maybe we could get exchange some Mongolian money. Theo decided to stay on the train. He wanted to listen to his audio books. What we forgot was that the railway gauge in Mongolia was narrower than that in China. This meant that they had to change the wheels on the train. They needed to take the train away to do this. Cynthia decided to go back to the train to check on Theo, when she saw the train pulling off with Theo still on board. It was at that moment we remembered! Too late! The train was gone and Theo probably didn’t know what was going on. Cynthia went to the officials to let them know what had happened but they told her not to worry, he was quite safe and the train will be back in a couple of hours. This was not good enough for Cynthia, Theo would be scared and we noticed there were some men still on the train and we didn’t want him to be alone, so she started getting angry and demanding that they take us to the train. To cut a long story short, they finally agreed to take us. We all got into a van and were driven about a kilometer down the road to where they had the train. By this time, the carriages had been separated and lifted up on hoists. They were in the process of taking off the wheels. They let us into the factory but we couldn’t get on the train. All we could do was wave to Theo through the window. We then spent the next couple of hours watching the men changing the wheels. It was quite interesting and we were free to wander around the factory, nobody seemed to mind.


Once they finished changing the wheels we were able to get back on the train and then back to the station, pick up the rest of the passengers on our way again.
Finally went to sleep. I woke up in the morning when the sun was up to find that we were smack bang in the middle of the Gobi desert. What a sight to wake up to! Look out one side of the train, nothing but sand until the horizon. Look out the other side of the train, nothing but sand until the horizon.


By the way, this train was actually the trans Siberian Express bound for Moscow. It was something that Cynthia and I had always wanted to do. I least we’ve done the first leg now.

Around 2:00pm we finally arrived in Ulam Bataar, the capital of Mongolia. Nothing like any capital I’ve ever seen. Apart from a few high rise buildings, the city seems to be made up of small plots of land divided by wooden fences. The houses were either Gers (Mongolian tents) or mud brick houses, or a combination of the two.

When we arrived at the station we had the people we booked the accommodation waiting for us. It turned out to be a German girl called Sabina. We were a little surprised because we thought that we would be staying with a Mongolian family. There was a French couple with her as well, I think they just came along for the ride. The problem with that was, when we got to her car, there was not enough room for all of us to fit in. It was a small Hyundai which was falling to pieces and the boot wouldn’t open. We decided that Cynthia, the kids, the French girl and the our baggage will go with Sabina, while me and the French guy ( Pierre ) will take the public bus.

Pierre and I jumped on the bus driven by a suicidal driver and made the harrowing journey to the outskirts of town where we would be staying.

By the time we had arrived, Cynthia had already had a long conversation with Sabina. It turns out that Sabina is married to a Mongolian man and has been living in Mongolia now for about 12 years. The accommodation she was offering was free of charge. That’s right, free. All we needed to do was pitch in with the food and cook every now and again. If it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t have stayed. The house is actually in a shanty town with no running water and no sewerage. The toilet was basically a hole in the ground with an outhouse built over it. The showers are a cold bucket of water. There were 2 Gers on the property of which we would be staying in one. The house itself was a run down shack in bad need of repair. There were about 20 travellers already there when we arrived. That evening, some Germans cooked a wonderful pasta with onions and apple chutney. It was delicious, although a bit surreal considering we had just gotten of a 30 hour train trip, eating nothing but chocolates and crisps, to now be eating pasta in a shanty town on the outskirts of Ulam Bataar. At least there was electricity.

I don’t know how the people wash here, especially in Winter when the temperatures get to minus 45 degrees. There’s a river a couple of hundred meters away, I think they wash there.

This reminds me. As we were coming into the city with the train. I saw an old man at a river, totally naked, washing himself. He had his back to me and was bent over.

Let me tell you, for the record, this was not…..a pretty……..sight!

If he had been standing in front of a billboard saying “Welcome to Mongolia” I might
have just stayed on the train and gone straight back to China!!


27/8

The first thing we tried to do today was to get our visas for Russia. We would like to visit Kazakstan, but we need to go through Russia to get there, as flights directly to Kazakstan were way too expensive. After that, we would jump on the trans Siberian again to get to Moscow. Turned out it’s not so easy to get a visa for Russia. Quite a lot of conditions, I won’t bore you with the details. As it turned out though, that night Cynthia was talking to an American girl who told her about a Monetary in China where they teach you Kung Fu. It costs about $400.00 per person for a month with accommodation and food included. This sounds like a great deal. We decided to apply for another Chinese visa and go back to China.
We will do this about a week before we leave Mongolia.


28/8

Drivers here in Mongolia are mad. The quality of the cars range from heaps falling to bits and the newest 4WD’s. Toyota Landcruisers are really popular here. Seen a couple of Hummers too.
Many things on their cars don’t work but the one thing that always works is the horn. Mongolian drivers love their car horns. So much so that they use them constantly.
Here is a typical situation. A car stalls. All the cars behind this driver are sitting on their horns while this poor bugger is trying to get his car started. When he finally does get his car started, he immediately starts blaring his horn at whoever is in front of him.


29/8

On the 31st, we are planning to go and stay with a Mongolian family out in the Steppes. They apparently live very traditionally in two Gers. One Ger for cooking, and the other for sleeping. We don’t need to pay them anything, just bring enough food for everyone which the wife will cook up for us. This has been arranged by Sabina. At this stage we really don’t know what to expect, we are looking forward to it, it should be a great experience.

Both Cynthia and I are coming down with colds so we hope we’ll be OK by then.
We haven’t washed yet because of this.

When we come back we plan to stay in a hotel with hot showers because by then, we would have been about 2 weeks without washing. We have taken to washing parts of ourselves with Dettol Wipes ( antiseptic wipes ).

Afer that we want to do a 4WD trip into the Gobi desert. Sabina has a friend who has an old Russian 4WD truck who can take us on a 10 day trip sleeping in tents. The truck apparently breaks down quite often. This is supposed to be part of the fun.

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