After a great night sleep, in a comfy, clean bed with the windows open to allow fresh air in - we have been lacking these nights with fresh air - we make our way to the train station to catch the KTX train to Busan, the 2nd largest city in South Korea (and which is also the 3rd largest port in the world). We are down here for about 24 hours to have a look around south South Korea. Eventually and despite the best efforts of the taxi driver we arrive in Tongyeoung City, a place that is wanting to [View Full Entry]

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The final sight we wanted to see before leaving Beijing today was the bird nest stadium that will host the opening and closing ceremonies, and plenty more besides, of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. So deciding to change our plans at the last minute, we had discussed at length how we could see the nest in the most time- and cost effective way. We checked out of the hostel and flagged a taxi down, showing him a piece of paper asking him to take us to the site, and we found ourselves having a great view at the fantastic stadium (Ed's new [View Full Entry]

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The planned lie in was ditched for a visit to the Great Wall of China with us choosing to walk from Jinshanling to Simatai against the guest house staff’s advice of visiting a piece of the wall closer by. Where we wanted to go would be full of tourists and was too far away - ARRGH. As it turned out they were wrong but at least we now know which trip pays them the higher commissions. In a country so keen on its dragons we expected a bit of a rough time today, what with being English and it being St. [View Full Entry]

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The initial plan for today was to go and visit the Great Wall of China. But after Melinda could not find us a reasonable priced driver who would take us there we decided to change the plan which seemed not so easy to grasp by Melinda, who kept saying after every suggestion of places we wanted to visit “then we go to wall”. Anyway we became the tour guides for most of the day as we visited the Military Museum, with about 600 other school children, a visit through a park with all the fantastic blossom out in full bloom, and [View Full Entry]

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Today is one of two days with our guide/translator Melinda. Today we hit the main sights, Tiananmen Square - which is just gargantuan and the biggest city square in the world - then into the Forbidden City situated at one end of the square which we did not get to see much of as A) most of the buildings were behind scaffolding and gauze for restoration and B) those that we could look at were swarmed by Chinese tourists. The Forbidden City was where the emperor lived with his 3000 or more concubines and the only 'men' allowed in were [View Full Entry]

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Waking up and looking out the window to see a big huge wall off in the distance is a first for us. We were so looking forward to the route explained in our guide book, as this lead us up and right next to the wall so that we got a good view of it as we then descend into the valley that Beijing sits in. This never happened, and in fact we did not see anymore of the wall and instead saw the inside of 58 tunnels. Beijing Station was massive, but what was excellent was that the hotel [View Full Entry]

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Last night as we walked home from the city centre we suggested to one another that it looked very easy for us to walk to the station tomorrow to catch our 8.05am train to Beijing. From a bridge over the railway tracks we plotted our route and estimated how long it would take us to get to the train station that we thought we could see. Oh the best laid plans….7.25am we set off. Carrying all that we own we walked over well placed planks of wood over running streams, under hot water pipes and waited for a freight train [View Full Entry]

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Mongolia is a sparsely populated country to say the least, with 3 million people in a country the size of western Europe. And a third of them live in the capital city, which doesn’t leave many others to fill the remainder. So to get a proper idea of Mongolia you really have to venture outside Ulan Bator into nomad-occupied lands. Virtually all the organised tours go to one or other of 2 national parks where you can see a traditional Mongolian village in operation or indeed stay in one. You will also get to hear a variety of European languages, [View Full Entry]

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The train arrived at Mongolia’s capital, Ulan Batar, bang on time (as usual) at 7:30am. Maybe a consortium of Russian, Mongolian and Chinese train companies could bid for Thameslink’s franchise. We had a reservation at the Palace Hotel and found a taxi driver to take us there, but when we check in and try to collect our onward train tickets from reception we are met with blank faces. There’s no sign of a reservation, so we are given a complimentary breakfast whilst we wait for the reservation manager’s arrival at 9am. To cut a long story short, it turns out that [View Full Entry]

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Up at 3:30am and then some nervous moments hoping that driver Sasha would appear on time. He was a little late but we were glad to see him as we had no contingency options to make our train. The drive took under an hour back to Irkutsk station and the 2 Sashas helped us find our train and carriage. They have been excellent, the guide having extremely good English and being very thoughtful, and the driver being probably the only safe driver we’ve had in the past 9 months. He was also very courteous and eager to be driving us [View Full Entry]

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