World Tour

Gallery: Trans-Siberian Train and Ulaanbaatar

chrisdews — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:38:00 GMT

Trans-Siberian Train and Ulaanbaatar

chrisdews — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:44:00 GMT

5 and a half days on the train was not at all as bad as it sounds. Got to know the people in our group a lot better and generally had a really good laugh. Lots of vodka was consumed on the first 2 nights until Migs (guy from California) decided to shut the door on the train police. They took his passport and demanded a 'fine' to get it back. We paid and kept the noise down a bit after that!

Had our first successful excursion to a night club on our first night in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Was an.. interesting selection of music and we all danced like idiots with the locals who were really friendly. The music was stopped twice for about 10 minutes while the police came in but we still don't know why as it was put back on just as loud as soon as they left.

Next day we headed to the countryside for a night in a traditional ger camp. A horse took me for a ride (I just tried my best to stay on the thing!). We played a game with goats teeth later on which involved flicking them at the matching ones. I'm still not really sure what the rules were to be honest.

Today, we came back to the city and did our own thing. I'm now sat in a 24 hour internet cafe in the back streets, I'm off now to try to avoid the open manholes and crazy traffic.

Moscow

chrisdews — Sat, 6 Oct 2007 01:15:00 GMT

Moscow was a bit of a blur! Arriving at 830am, right in the middle of rush hour and having to try navigate the metro system while carrying all our stuff.. Made especially tough by the Russian's complete disregard for any queuing.

Met up with our Trans-siberian group, 9 blokes and 1 girl. Good banter though. I've been nicknamed 'Junior' because im the youngest on the tour. We've sampled more russian quisine and attempted to sample the night life but ended up walking around in a dodgy part of town. 5 rats greeted us when we got off the metro and we walked past a woman leading a pony at 1 point. Gave up finding the club, ate a rat kebab.. it did'nt taste like chicken anyway. We then managed to lose the dodgy Russians that were following us and walked for an hour and a half to get home. Good times!

We did all the sight seeing the next day, followed by an ice hockey game the day after, where, despite our attempts to avoid the exact situation, we ended up sat right in the middle of the away fans (some of whom had driven for 24 hours to get there). We tried to keep our heads down but we must have stuck out as a few of them started asking us who we were, etc. It turned out they were really friendly and they actually told us we made the right choice not to go to the SKA Moscow match where there is a lot of violence apparently. They gave us a round of applause at the end! I have no idea why but we were loving it!

The next day was more sight-seeing, where we ended up in the middle of some politcal rally by accident. Then we had a mad dash to buy food and get on the train to Mongolia.

Gallery: Moscow

chrisdews — Thu, 4 Oct 2007 02:31:00 GMT

Gallery: St Petersburg

chrisdews — Mon, 1 Oct 2007 02:07:00 GMT

St Petersburg!

chrisdews — Mon, 1 Oct 2007 00:35:00 GMT

St Petersburg is an awesome city. So many incredible buildings and monuments and great looking girls everywhere!

The roads are crazy, the first day we were running across crossings all the time, even if the lights are red some cars will come at you. It seems that you have to show the driver that you're willing to get run over to make them stop.

Our first night, we went for a walk and got lost. Both tired and sick of walking we were getting wound up when a group of Norwegians came up to us and pretty much told us to go for a beer with them. They sorted us out completely, giving us a map and circling where our hostel was as well as a few things we should see. The Norwegians can drink! We went out with them again last night and i foolishly tried to keep up with them on the Ruski Standart.. I was in a bad way this morning. Cool people.

On Friday we were taken out by our honcho, Helga. She showed us all the sights and took us out for a meal and drinks with her Friends later on. We had cabbage pie and some kind of beef soup which wasn't all that great! She took us to a few bars, the later one was mad. Absolutely no room and almost every person in there dancing with enthusiasm. I read they know how to party in St Petersburg and i think this might be true!

Yesterday we tried to go to a Zenit game (St Petersburgs football team). On the way we got stopped by 2 massive policemen who asked to see our tickets (we didn't have any) and told us to stand aside. We managed to get away after he looked at both our passports, but after hearing horror stories about the Russian police we were both pretty nervous to say the least.. We tried to buy tickets a few minutes later but were told "Tickets Finish". By then we were quite happy to just get away from the hundreds of police around the stadium.

Internet minutes are running out now, We're off to Moscow on the overnight train later. Interesting to see if we get any sleep...

Gallery: Home Send Off

chrisdews — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Last Saturday in Wilmslow

Ready to go!?

chrisdews — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:16:00 GMT

After 4 years of intentions and 4 months of serious planning, I’m finally setting off on the round-the-world trip. Flying to Heathrow this afternoon, then St Petersburg early tomorrow morning, it’s finally starting to sink in that I’m going to be responsible for, and answering to, only myself for the next 8 months!

The last year has been the most eventful of my life in a way. I’ve gone from the start of the year, where I was made redundant, had my car bumped in to and got dumped all in the same week (in that order), to teaching myself an A level and organising a pretty big trip. I’ve worked 2 jobs, sold a lot of my possessions and gone through the university application process in a short space of time and if anything this trip might be less intense than the run up to it.

Saying goodbye to everyone has been pretty bad, I’ve been realising how many people I’m going to miss, but I’m trying to remind myself how tired I am of my current situation generally, and how much I want to see things other than the 4 walls of my bedroom in my parents house! Bring on some excitement.

I’m looking forward to seeing my mate Bob from Loughborough days later tonight. Hopefully we’ll have a fairly chilled evening as the thought of a 07:30 flight to St Petersburg on Thursday with a hangover does not appeal. I think Chris’ uni mates will have other ideas for that though but maybe he’ll have something to say about it considering he probably feels pretty rough this morning going by last night. Getting him-self barred from Lloyds for his efforts.

Anyways, I don’t know who of you will be reading this but I’m writing it for myself to be honest. I want to keep this page as a reminder of the whole trip and my thoughts. It might be boring for the rest of you ;-) Hopefully I’ll make the time to update it fairly regularly anyway. I’ve included some pics of the leaving do mainly to figure out how all this works.