Just thought I'd give a quick update. Riga was pretty, but again rainy and cold and infested with English stag parties. Patrick thought he'd never get to experience a real Riga stag party, but we were sitting eating our dinner in a bar near a private room one night when all the lads turned up for the party, so he invited himself in! We hung around until I found it all a bit offensive (which didn't take very long), and then we left. It was a relief for us to reach Riga after Russia, the people were friendly, spoke English and [View Full Entry]

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I have been meaning to update these more regularly as there is free internet at most of the hostels in Russia, and we have had a fair bit if time hanging aroud waiting for trains, but it just hasn't worked out for me. We are leaving Russia tonight, so I'm condensing the train, Moscow and St Petersburg into one. We boarded Irkustsk ready for our 77 hour train trip on the evening of the 19th, which would get us to Moscow on the 22nd. Due to our late booking, we had had to purchase a ticket which included food. It was [View Full Entry]

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Sooo. After we had realised our timing error we examined our options. They were limited. If we tried to catch a minibus down, we risked missing the train and we weren't entirely confident that we would in fact find a place to sleep the night at Angaskolkya. We headed back to the guesthouse, to check the internet and once again check the train times so we could be sure/or not sure of making the circum-baikail.....low and behold their were two Irishmen that had just arrived and that was the end of us for the day. Paddy had been deprived of serious [View Full Entry]

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We left Mongolia on the 15th and boarded the train headed to Irkutsk which was to be our first stop in Russia. Once again we had a compartment to ourselves, and the Provodnitsa (carriage attendant) was a jolly, gay German who would surreptiously wink and blow kisses to me on his way past. The trains between Mongolia and Russia are full of Mongolian traders, smuggling their wares across the border. We had been warned to check the shelves and under the seat compartments in our carriage, so that there was nothing stored there that did not belong to us. What we [View Full Entry]

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(There are photos attached so click the web link on your e-mail is you can't see them) We have just spent the most amazing two weeks in the Mongolian countryside and have had a fabulous experience. We organised a driver and a guide through our guesthouse and were joined by 2 Spanish girls and a Danish couple. Accomodation was mainly in Gers owned by Mongolian families, although we slept in tents occasionally. There was no luxury, beds were hard or the floor, no running water so no shower for 12 days and the toilets were holes in the ground surrounded by [View Full Entry]

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We had very inauspicious start to our visit to Mongolia. After alighting from the train, we were met with the usual touts for hostels, and because we had to find an ATM, chose to jump in a taxi instead. A taxi driver came running toward us, and after assuring us that his was indeed a metered taxi, packed our bags into the back of his vehicle. First he drove us to a money exchange, even though we had specifically said ATM, and then we drove around, and around the city looking for an ATM that accepted Mastercard. As we were driving [View Full Entry]

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Nearly a month no blog....we are now in Mongolia, but I need to update on the rest of our China tour. Last blog we were killing time in Suzhou, waiting for our overnight train to Xi'an. We arrived, left our bags at the hotel, breakfasted on dumplings, and then grabbed a tandem to cycle round the city walls (13km in all, and Patrick will tell you he did most of the work). We then grabbed a cab and headed to the Big Goose Pagoda, the monastery ofTripitaka (you know, Great Sage equal of Heaven), where we spent a couple of hours [View Full Entry]

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China, where do I start? We are doing an organised tour through China with Intrepid, mainly because at the time we wanted to get our visa the whole Olympics hoopla was making getting visas difficult, in the end we probably didn't need to, but we are looking at it as a bit of a holiday from our holiday in that we don't really have to think, we have someone doing it for us. China is big, everything is big and there are so so many people, many of whom seem to be on holidays, visiting the same attractions as our little [View Full Entry]

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It's been a long time between blogs.....we are now in China, and internet is not so easy, but I thought I should just go back a month ago to Northern Thailand and give a brief run down before moving onto the China files. We flew to Chiang Mai on the 9th of August and were met at the airport by Jono and BB. You have no idea how nice it was to be met at a destination after all this time......also they had a car, so it meant no haggling with tuk-tuk and taxi drivers, no local buses, and no walking [View Full Entry]

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Ok. So Patrick tells me that I write too much for you busy people that actually have to work to read.....so we'll try a new format, with some highlights, and then some detail below for those of you that have the time. Since I last updated the blog we have: * Secured both our Chinese and Russian visas....there is a lot more to this story, it took us nearly a week in Vientiane and many trips back and forth from the embassies, but in the end the beard won out (it is now 100 days and we are debating the big [View Full Entry]

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