The big trip

Xi'an - China

tana — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:37:00 GMT

Xi'an Alas, we have been incredibly decadent today. We have spent the equivalent to one night's accommodation on coffee and cake! I am not at all remorseful- I enjoyed and savoured every sip of coffee and morsel of my baked cheesecake (o.k it was about eight pounds).

We are in Xi'an at the moment and it is a much wealthier city than Cheng du. We were wandering back from the Little Goose pagoda to find the very fancy smancy part of town and a Hagen Das cafe. This Hagen Das seemed to be inbred with Ritz and we had a vey posh afternoon coffee indeed. My affacatto was so good I could have cried:)

Xi'an, like the affacatto, is pretty cool. I like it almost as much as Beijing. Bigger than Chengdu ( 6.9 million), it is also a lot cleaner and therefore nicer to walk around(though morning smog has ruined all my photos). It still has its old city walls, which are massive. The coolest part of town is the Muslim quarters. It is a mix of hutongs and proper market areas. Its buzzing with people, yummy food and almost anything you want to buy. We have been there both day and night and it is worth walking through the streets at different times. At night its really vibrant and alive, whilst in the day you can just stroll and browse through the markets in a relatively calm manner.

The big daw card to Xi'an is the Terracotta Warriors. As fate would have it, the warriors are on their way to London for a temporary exhibition! But there were still plenty of warriors left to see. The warriors are on display at the actual excavation sight and so you see them situated in the chambers that they were found in. The whole exhibition is pretty cool, especially when you see how much work was placed into rebuilding the warriors - they were found smashed into pieces.

Leaving Xi'an tomorrow means that we are also officially leaving behind winter! Yeah! I can't believe we didn't have one proper snow fall the whole trip! We will be spending 2 nights in Guang Zhou before we head into Hong Kong for chinese new year and meeting up with Ana, Jayson, Gabby and Todd (double yeah!).

Anyways hope you are well and having a lovely day :) Tanya

Chengdu - china

tana — Fri, 9 Feb 2007 18:17:00 GMT

Chengdu is a tiny city in China of roughly 4 million people. It would be a nice city to walk around except for the traffic which leaves visible pollution in the air. The foot path traffic is also chaotic as pedestrains share it with bikes, battery powered mopeds! What is nice about this city is that a) there seems to be no desire to hassle us for money - we can explore shops and walk around to our hearts content and b) there is a strong community feel here. In many of the public areas you will find people excersising on free gym equipment or taking traditional dance classes. (I want to join in but Anthony won't let me ask :() We walked through the people's park yesterday which is a large common park which beautiful and in some areas peaceful to walk around. The park is full of people as it offers lots of activities for the locals. Besides the park itself and about a zillion teas houses in which to relax, they have open areas where again people are having dance classes (ball room as well as traditional), Kareoke machines, a kids fun park, music groups and more and more and more.

We came to Chengdu - not for public kareoke - but for the giant pandas. There is a breeding centre about half and hour out of Chengdu and it was well worth the effort. Pandas are so cute. They are more cute in real life which I didn't think was possible. Everything they do is cute even when they are bullying another panda for their bamboo. Baby panda cubs are even more cute. Yep, they are just cute.

We got to see them at feeding time, which is when they are most active. The carers place the bamboo close to the boundaries of their areas so you get to see them up close(Did I mention that they are cute?). As you can probably guess, I'm still pretty excited about seeing the pandas.

Tonight we are off the Xi'an to see the Terracotta warriors and explore the city in general. By then I am sure I will have gotten the pandas out of my system.

Take care

tanya x

Tibet

tana — Mon, 5 Feb 2007 19:51:00 GMT

I must say this at the start of every journal entry but Tibet is really amazing- so far, we have only been in Lhasa for a day:)

I know I say this every entry as well, but...the scenery on the train trip up here was awesome! Unfortunately our camera's battery died and the pictures we have are pretty lame and in no way depict the overwhelming beauty and expanse of the Tibetan landscape. Once the train enters Tibet, it passes through protected reserves and you sees herds of yaks (my favourite), gazelles, donkeys and sheep roaming this country side that has nothing on it but fierce looking mountains iced with snow and plateues ( I really wich I could spell that word) covered in this mossy grass that the yaks really seem to like. The train went through some areas where the altitude was over 5000 metres above sea level ( it is apparently the highest train trip in the world). Here the train would be passing through a relatively flat areas but in the distance you could see the peaks of snow covered mountains barely reached our horizon level!

One more thing about the train trip - we were definately everyone else's entertainment. There were few- if any other westerners on the train and Anthony especially was gawked at throughout the train trip. Little kids would repeatedly run past our cabin and one lady had to take photos with us both. We have also had a few knocks on our hotel door in Lhasa last night. People would claim 'oh sorry wrong room', giggle and rush away.

Lhasa, though only 3000 metres above seas level, has left us feeling the effects of Altitude sickness. We didn't feel ill on the train as extra oxygen pumped though the cabins when we reach the higher altitudes. This has limited what we have seen of Lhasa so far as we both feel pretty rotten. The walk around the town we took this morning left us head achey, exhausted and very nausious. There is nothing you can really do about it nut rest and drink nlots of water. We are hoping it will wear off by tomorrow.

Lhasa, what we have seen of it seems to be divided into the Tibetan area and Chinese area. The Tibetan area has a similar feel to Mongolia. We walked around the Barkhor markets - which surrounds the Jankhong Temple and is visited by pilgrims more than tourists. Here you can see them praying outside the temple and walking their pilgrim route. The markets (in this area)themselves are aimed at the pilgrims and are full of wonderfully bright coloured beads and scarves and other objects that I have no idea what they are for!

Any way off to work out the next leg of out trip. We can't do much else.

take care

tanya

Beijing

tana — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:02:00 GMT

Beijing is absolutely amazing. It is definately my favourite city so far. We are planning to spend 7 nights here but I think we will have to come back another time- there is so much to do.

In a way it is strange we like it so much when we have definately been hasseled, swindled and had people attempt to rip us off everytime we leave our hostel. My favourite is the women at the silk market. As you walk through they are constantly yelling at you the 'nice lady' to come and look into their shop. If you dare to casually look in the direction of their shop and then don't buy an item they scream at you 'you crazy! Why you waste my time!' in my case, or in Anthony's case "You are very very bad person'. Once you get used to it and learn how to haggle though, it becomes a game and you can get items for a reasonable price.

We have been to so many sites since we have been here and yet have only scraped the surface of what Beijing has to offer. We have visited the Forbidden City, Tianamin Square, The Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace, Walked through the Hu Tongs and of course walked the Great Wall. Our hostel offered a tour inwhich you walk a 'non' tourist part of the wall. It was beautiful just to walk amongst mountains and ruins for a day and be out of cities for a while. I have to admit it was also pretty physical and at some points a tad scary. Another highlight of the week was to see the chinses acrobates perform. You couldn't help but 'ooh and ahh' throughout the performance and at times people in the audience (including me) cried out in concern over the feat the were about to attempt. Absolutely wicked.

Anna and Paul, who we met on the Trans mongolian railway has been with us this week and we will be sadly parting ways tomorrow. With them we have experienced as much of another wonderful feature of Beijing: food. Street food and resturaunt food alike it is delicious!

The only down side of Beijing is that heating is a luxury that isn't really offered with your accomodation. (I should not we do have heating, it just the rooms do not heat up)I am kind of tired of being permantly cold. But alas, I will have to get used to it as apparently hostels and hotels in Tibet also don't offer heating unless you stay in the Top end hotels. If this is true, the next update will be written by a broken woman.

all my love

tanya

Ulan Batoor - Mongolia

tana — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:36:00 GMT

I know I have been whining, begging for cold weather. Well, I will never ever make that mistake again. To say Mongolia has been cold is an understatement. Everyday has been around minus 20. Its no so bad in the sense that we are well and truly rugged up...but it seems to just suck all the energy out your body, as well as your will to live, and I'm afraid to say that in Ulan Batoor, Anthony and I have been apathetic travellers.

Ulan Batoor is quite a small capitial city and is more western than Moscow. In saying that, it is cool to walk around and see the population dressed both in traditional costume and western clothing alike. It has also been our first look into buddhist temples and eastern Palaces which are beautiful in a completely different way to the churches and castles of Europe. The people here are really friendly, though kids sometime stare at us as we kind of stand out.

One thing, I must warn all future travellers to Ulan Batoor that crossing roads here is a life hazard. Forget Turkey and Italy, Mongolia takes the cake. The first couple of day here I went into a panic every time I had to cross the road and would literally alter my travels around the city to avoid certain crossings. Imagine trying to cross a very very busy road that are covered in a thick layer of very slippery black ice and zooming cars that do not obey road rules or stay on the correct side of the road or slow down for stop lights or pedestrians. Instead they beep their horns to kindly warn you that they are about to run you down. In a few of the major intersections there are pedestrian crossings with lights or traffic cops. This make absolutey nor difference. I feel like a deserve some kind of medal for suriving this experience.

Ulan Batoor itself, is in a flat basin surrounded by mountains. The weather here is sunny and its the first blue skies we have had on this trip. As I said before the temeprature is constantly below freezing so the ground is covered with ice and snow that fell weeks ago. Besides the temples and palaces, we have also been to the museam of politcal persecution, which covers the mass killings of intectuals and preists by the soviets in the 1920's and 30's. Most of the museam are pictures of these people and their life stories; the tragic thing being that many of these people helped to bring communism to mongolia in the first place. Suddenly you turn a corner and you a faced with a room of skulls,eached cracked by a bullet. The skulls belong to llamas (preists)killed to clense the country from the influnce of religion. The other painful sight in MOngolia is the children living on the streets. It gets so cold here that the lids have to sleep in the sewers at night. You can actually see that it happens as many of the manholes are left open. One woman we actually met on the train was going to Mongolia to work in an orphanage that was set up to help tackle this situation.

One very cool thing to do in Mongolia is to go to the black market. Here you could find absolutely anything. Unfortunately it is outdoors and we didn't last very long in the exposed air. The whole market seems to rest on ground covered in ice and the pain in my feet out weighed my desire to shop.

In Mongolia we ran into friends we spent time with friends we made on the train, Paul and Anna, who we are also seeing alot of in Beijing. With them, we experienced MOngolian night life which wasn't too bad.

WEll, thats Mongolia. Next is Beijing.

Trans mongolian railway

tana — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 23:58:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

Sorry I haven't added an article for a while but I couldn't get this site to come up on Mongolia. We are now in Beijing and hopefully over the next few days I will get time to get our journal up to date. Thank you for your emails, it is so nice to hear what everyone is up to. Though we are having a great time, travelling does make me miss people more. Postcards will be coming soon. I found it hard to find any in moscow but I will definately find some in China.

Trans - mongolian rail. Any one who has known me since highschool knows that I have always wanted to take this trip and it didn't disappoint. We took the train from Moscow to Ulan Batoor and then from Ulan Batoor to Beijing. The first stretch of the trip took 5 days and we went to 5 different times zones in that time (now for the first time in four years we are actually on the same time zone as australia) and believe it or not, the trip really flew by.

I think a major reason why we enjoyed the trip so much was that we went first class, which meant we had a cabin to ourselves. This gave us our own personal space- which for five days is necassary, but because all the people on our actual carriage spoke English and we very friendly, we also got the social aspect of being on the train.

Our days very quickly fell into a routine of looking at the passing landscape, drinking lots of tea/coffee, chatting to the others and just passing time. The only interuption to this schedual was when the train pulled into a station. The cue for this was the conductors locking the toliet doors. Then everyone in our carriage would put on their out door gear and watch through the passage way windows us enter the station. Then we would all rush out to walk around a little and buy food from the ladies who sold stuff on the platforms. Our excitment to get off the train and run around the platforms made our carriage attendants very nervous. They usually kept watch over us like other hens and would yell at us if they thought we were going to stray to far away from them. At one station, the poor attendant got worried there were too many people on the platform for him to watch us so we all had to get back on to the train.

Our carriage attendants were friendly and really lovely. This is not true of all carriage attendants. We got nice service because we were in the china part of the train. The russia end couldn't give on iota if they left someone behind. We got this information from Steve, our friend who would come us from 'little russia' each night to drink vodka with us ( I am now over vodka for a very long time).

Once again, besides the people we met, the best thing about the train was watching the passing landscape. I could go on for ages about its beauty and diversity. It was so nice to sit and read a book by the window. Everytime I glanced up, the landscape would have changed. Two of the most impressive things I saw were: a) massive frozen lakes that went on for miles and if you looked closely often there would be a car driving on it or some one ice fishing and b) the Gobi desert covered in snow. Though it strangely looked like a moon scape, it was teeming with wild life. We saw camels, horses, llamas, cattle and massive birds of prey.

Anyway, I'll stop there, or I'll just go on for ages, but if you every get a chance to take the transiberian or transmongolian rail- do it. IT was one of the best experiences of the trip so far and we were both sad when it came to an end.

Moscow

tana — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:30:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

Moscow is a wicked city! We have just spent four nights here and have had a really fun time.

Moscow is more like what you expect a Russian city to be. It isn't beautiful like St Petersburg, less people speak English and the people look more like ordinary people and not Russian supermodels( I didn't get to mention last message how the people of St Petersburg are very well dressed. Almost every girl is very tall very beautiful and manage to walk this massive city full on uneven paths in incredibly high spiked heeled knee high boots).It is grey and a little dirty and you do have to watch out for scams by the police and locals- especially in Red Square.

Four days has definately been enough to do all the sites. We have been to Red Square, The Kremlin, Lenin's Tomb, The Red October Chocolate Factory, The Arbat, St Basils Cathederal and several other very beautiful churches too. We are a little over site seeing at the moment so we have given the KGB museam a miss. I have loved everything we have seen, though Lenin's Tomb was a bit eerie (especially since the sombre mood was interupted by polka music played by the nearby ice skating rink) and I am not quite sure that is was really him.

Moscow, Like St Petersburg is full of rules. There is always a certain way to enter a building and a certain way to walk through a building which is not always the most logical way but they ensure that you do it that way. I think I have spent a fare part of the trip being shunted from one entrance to another than actually being inside the building I have come to visit.

One of the highlights of Moscow was seeing an opera to the Bolshoi theatre. As the new theatre is currently being renovated, we were in the new Bolshoi which itself is an incredibly beautiful and intimate theatre.The curches here too are beautiful with their tear shaped roofs.

Another highlight has been the people we met at the hostel. We were lucky to meet a great bunch of people while we were here, including the hostel staff themselves (if you come to moscow definately look into staying at the Transiberian Hostel). We have had a great time seeing the sites with them, learning the correcrt way to drink vodka (yes, there are rules on how to do this aswell) and celebrating the Russian Orthodox new year. There have also been a few odd people at the hostel as well, but I tell you about them another time.

The weather is still very warm (well 0-5°c)and sadly no snow. Hopefully our next stop will deliver the goods in that area.

Tonight we will be on our way to Mongolia and will be on the actual transiberian railway; very very exciting!. We will on the train for 5 nights before we reach our first stop, so I am asuming novelity will probably wear off when we board it again to go to China.

take care

tanya and anthony x

St Petersburg

tana — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:34:00 GMT

After 6 days in St Petersburg we are off to Moscow.

Petersburg is a beautiful city. Everything about it is on a grand scale. Grand ornate buildings that are on grand wide roads that should only belong on freeways and can be a bit tircky to cross; large canals and the Neva river that carve though the city. The longer we stayed here more the I like this city.

Initially, St Petersburg was a bit of an anti- climax. The guide books were full of warnings, especially when dealing with the border police, that we were both anxious and excited about entering Russia. In particular we thought that this would be the fisrt city that we couldn't relay on speaking English to communicate with people. Well, it wasn't the case, at least for us. St Petersburg is a very westernised city both in looks and culture. Everyone, from the border Police to people on the street have been very friendly and helpful. Every second person seems to speak English and if they don't, they will find someone who can.

We have done all the sites and in particular, The Hermitage was impressive. An art gallery situated within the walls of Catherine the Great's winter palace,even if you don't like the art work, you will be impressed by the beauty of the rooms.

All on all st Petersburg is a beautiful city . I've run out of time again and I have so much more to say. Hope everyone is well. love tan.

Week one

tana — Fri, 5 Jan 2007 23:41:00 GMT

Entry one: Denmark , Sweden and Finland
well, we are well and truly on our way. It has been almost a week and we are well and truly in the swing of things now. Denmark, SWeden and Helsinki have been lovely. All 3 cities are quite small so we got a good 'feel' for them in the short time we have been there.
There isn't really much to report at the moment. Sweden's Gammal Stan (the old towm) was incredibly beautiful and Helsinki is an impressive mix of architecture of several periods, ranging from grand building from the days of Russian rule to a strip of residential art nevou ( Icannot spell) buildings. I am suprised at how warm it is right now and can't wear my coat as it is way too warm for the current climate.
We have done a alot of travelling over the last few days and it has confirmed the benefits of travelling home in this manner. The train from Denmark to Sweden was amazing. The lanscape was breathtakingly beautiful. It was so flat, green and picturesque with these perfectly still lakes. Our train was a tilting train, so at moments it felt like you were about to fall right in. The ferry to Helsinki was also awesome. We had to navigate the swedish archipeleo and this massive ferry just skimmed past these islands at night. It was really beautiful to watch.
anyway I have run out of time.