Bangkok

Bangkok. Smiling faces again. Russia could learn much about customer service

Helsinki

 

People eating bags of freshly podded green peas. Like we would eat strawberries.

St Petersburg

St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, St Petersburg. Does not get dark until 11pm and light again at 4.30am!

Moscow

 

Magnificent Moscow.

Yekaterinburg

Where Asia and Europe meet. Also best known for the place of death of the Romanovs and also thousands in the Stalinist purges 1937 and 1938.

Getting serious "Trainlag" as we keep putting the clock back and as we cross Russia.

Trans Siberian Railway

Train No1 "Rossiya" - Vladivostock to Moscow service. Once on the train you revert to Moscow time. No matter where geographically you are. Two days of train, birch forests and very occasionally little villages.

Pull open curtains in the corridor to see the view and the provinitska pulls them shut. She runs a tight ship that one! She vacumes and dusts, She keeps toilets locked and opens them only at very odd times!

Lake Baikal - Russia

 

 

We get the first hint of Lake Baikal through the fir trees before the train runs along the shore for 200 kms of tunnels and cliff sides. Irkutsk was once known as the Paris of Siberia. It is a very European city even though it is on same longitude as Bangkok. In the afternoon wandered to the lake side for a swim but the water feels just above freezing point!

Mongolia

The Naadam Festival at Ulan Bator and then a few days camping in the steppes.

Magnificent scenery. Eagles circling via the thermals, marmot like rodents running around the grasslands.

Beijing

Up at 6am for an early morning stroll around Tiananmen. The square was already busy with kids flying kites and people having their photos taken in from of the portrait for Chairman Mao.

Great wall is beautiful even if totally reconstructed. The wild wall further along is even more impressive.

Hong Kong to Xi'an

 

Traveling through China is like a Zang Yimou movie set. Rice paddies, water buffalo, workers in the fields and little brown mud brick villages. Even in the countryside the air is polluted from the coal power stations.

 

Xi'an is very pretty. Old city walls, wide boulevards and tree lined streets.

 

Terracotta warriors are amazing especially the ones partially unearthed. Just and arm or face appearing through the earth.