The journey from Hue to Danang was the last leg done by train on our trip. At the Hue train station we were confined to a waiting room with no air conditioning and no windows were open and, of course, the train was late. The train for Hanoi arrived and they opened the doors of the waiting room so we all got out and placed ourselves on the platform according to our carriage number. The platform itself is a huge market where train passengers can buy fruits, cakes, biscuits, pot noodles aplenty, nuts, etc, etc. The amount of business going on across the rails with passengers in the Hanoi train was a real show, as our train approached business started to be conducted in matter of seconds and it was scary to see people running across ... read more

As you may have seen in our entry about Hanoi, we were quite surprised by the quantity of motorbikes in Vietnam. They are used for all kind of transport and as I said before, in Vietnam the middle of the road is a relative concept. Here are a few pictures we thought you might enjoy. They are in no particular order and of average quality as most of them were taken through the window of a car or van bringing us to Halong Bay or to the Mekong delta. Have fun, B & R... read more

After some adventure on the train, we arrived around 8 AM at Hanoi's central railway station. Used to being “aggressed” by a cohort of taxi drivers and other middlemen, it was quite a surprise to have none of this. Yes a few people proposed their services, but just smiled when we said no and we were left in peace. This was a first surprise. The other surprise was the number of motorbikes all over the place. They were running on the street, parked on the street, parked on the side walk, in short: a sea of motorbikes. Then, there he was, our driver coming to pick us up ... with his motorbike! OK, we already saw that 2 passengers per bike is not a maximum here, but we had 3 suitcases and 2 rug sacks! He ... read more

After the positive experience in the Buriat country we were very much looking forward to Mongolia and we were not going to be disappointed with the days that followed. When boarding the train for Ulaanbaatar in Ulan-Uday, we were joined by a team of young Mongolian sportsmen in their Adidas tracksuits with 'Mongolia' written on their back. It was the Mongolian boxing team coming back loaded with trophies from some competition in Russia. One of them was the Olympic silver medal for his category. As we shared our four berth compartment with two charming young swiss girls, the Mongolian sportsmen passed by our place a bit more than 'normal'... They started joking with the girls when waiting at the Mongolian border, we took a few pictures. Robson had his picture taken with the Olympic champion as ... read more

On 16 May at 9.10 we arrived at the station in Irkutsk after 52 hours on the train. We were then taken to the village of Listvyanka, about 1 hour drive. We shared the car with Natasha from South Africa and Derek from England. Both had been traveling the Trans Siberian from Beijing to Moscow, so Ben and I had plenty of questions. They told us the stories of the Mongolian traders crossing the border to sell goods in Russia. In Mongolia it is much cheaper. The stories of how the traders hide their merchandise was quite scary. Amused us for some time. This region of Russia is very different from what we had seen so far and the day before it had snowed in Irkutsk. We still saw from the train the snow that had ... read more