Ni Hao dear friends and family!

Yesterday we arrived in Seoul - South Korea and since we haven't had proper internet access we decided to wait until we gave you a nice blog to read on your lunch break ;-)

On the 16th of September we arrived in the cultural capital of Russia - St. Petersburg. Here we met up with our travel group. This consisted of Jess & Angus (The Aussie newly weds), Alastrair (The secret millionair -Aussie), Samara (Our Scottish Granny of the group ;-)) and Marc and Sam (The Swiss - not a couple!). After a few days of cultural sightseeing (hermitage, Church of our Saviors blood etc.) we left on the night train to Moscow. Here we had a look at the waxed Lenin which was quite a freaky experience. Red square was pretty small, but their war museum was pretty big! Moscow Russians are the coldest type of Russians. An example of this is if you ask a Russian How he/she is doing the standard answers is: Normal.... Not very open and friendly, but we found one or two smiling ones. 

Then it was time for our 5-day train trip! This wasn't as bad as we thought actually. We were divided into two coupe's with 4-persons each. We saved a British Girl - Tara -  who was travelling one her own in third class between smelly though friendly food sharing Russians with big knives ;-).  We can tell you that the view from the train is NOT the same all the time it changes from bushie to flat to hilly etc. The fall view was very nice with all the nice colors. We expected to see more nothing-ness, however next to the tracks you can see several small 'villages'. This consist of wooden shacks were people live with their own vegetable gardens, and not to forget the 'town' cow. We saw a lot of deteriorated houses, factories and just plain poverty. Our mood was brightened by the (freshly baked!) bread-with- sausage lady. Roger was her biggest customer ;-). After 5 days of instant-noodles, sausage buns, the occasional vodka binge and no showers we arrived in Irkutsk. We had arrived in Siberia and had entered the continent of Asia! 

From Irkutsk we were directly transported to Listvyanka at Lake Baikal. On the way we saw a lot of soldiers and police officers along every exit of our road. We felt like we were VIPs! (or criminals) After a while we found out that the prime minister of China was going to visit Irkutsk. We waved when he flew over in his choppaahhh!! Lake Baikal is a beautiful lake which is the largest fresh water lake in the world, due to its mega depth of 1.6 km! It's widening with 2 cm a year and in a few millenia it will split the Asian continent in two. Together with our substitute guide Maria and Sam we climbed up to an observatory. Here we were welcomed by Drunken Russian Scientists! They provided us with an awesome panorama from the top of the solar observatory (biggest in Russia). Afterwards they invited us for Russian tea, love songs, drunken driving (which we refused) and an equipment inspection. Apparently the equipment ordered from the States was broken (3 million dollar!) and they fixed it with duck tape... nice!

Parallel to part of Lake Baikal lies the Great Baikal Trail (~25km). We decided to walk the trail and catch the sunrise on the lake. We and our Swiss companions (both ex-soldiers!) gathered our stuff and left Listvyanka at 6.45am. The trail provided us with autumn colored forests/hills and beautiful views of the lake. The end of the trail was in Bolshi Koty, a small Russian village only reachable by the trail or by boat. We arrived here at 3pm only to find out that there were no boats going back to Listvyanka because of an imminent storm! It was too late to walk back so we had to stay the night. Thanks to Willemien's charm and our point-it book (always take one with you!) we were able to call the remainder of our group to let them know we were safe. Eventually we spend the night at Creepy David's (glass-eyed fellow) "hostel". The next morning we set out at 6am to return to Listvyanka on time for the bus to our train. This provided us with another sunrise and Nerpa seals (Baikal only)!!!! We arrived at 11am (5 hours yeah!) with the rest of the group just waking up.

Next stop, Mongolia and Ulaanbaatar! The land of happy meat eating people and great rolling planes. On the train into Mongolia we were together in a coupe with two Mongolian guys. After hearing that Rogier was always hungry they made it their mission to make him fat! They were afraid he would be blown away in the Mongolian winds. So Rogier ended up eating a can of beef and fat, which he of course liked very much ;). In UB city we visited an traditional dance and music show featuring Mongolian throat singing, two-snared instruments, funny costumes and a snake woman that balanced upside-down on her teeth in the air with legs everywhere! The following day we went to a "traditional" (=touristic) Ger camp. The Ger's fitted 4 persons and was kept warm by a stove we had to keep burning ourselves :) This was needed as it got pretty cold at night. We did some traditional mongolian sports such as archery (Rogier was the only one to hit the target) and horse riding. Included was a visit to a real nomadic family, which was quite the experience! The country of Mongolia is going through a very rapid development, which is visible all around UB city. As a result the nomadic way of existence is coming under pressure because of all the people moving to the city. This is a true pitty because this culture and the way of living makes Mongolia so beautiful. 

And then it was time to head on to China with just six of us remaining. Jess and Angus didn't get their Chinese Visa so they left us to fly to Tokyo. We will meet up with them in Brisbane later on :D. Our first evening we headed on to the Night Market were we could eat everything of what you expect you can eat in China. So therefore we ate some snake on a stick (chewy and chicken-like), spiders (crunchy), beef and chicken. We were also offered 'whoofwhoof' and other creatures like scorpions and larvae which we refused. After this pre-dinner snack we went to Tianemen square (plein van de hemelse vrede) to wave at a picture of Mao and get our pictures take by other Chinese people. They especially like Willemien's hair. It was very busy in Beijing because this week it was Golden week, a national holiday. Therefore there were a lot of Chinese tourists. 

The next day and last official day of our group tour we went to a old part of the Great Wall which was less busy and more authentic. We ended this day by eating peking duck! Jummie! Since we had some more days left in Beijing we relaxed a bit and visited the China Open Tennis ATP 500 finals (Nadal vs Djokovic! And Serena Williams :)), the summer palace, the temple of heaven and the forbidden city. But we mostly enjoyed a lot of very nice street food! 

 

And now we are in Seoul were we will stay the next 3 days and then we are going to travel around here for 3 weeks. We will keep in touch!

xxx Roger en Mien