Julie and Mikko's Magical Mystery Tour

Back home

2009-05-26T11:41:00.019+03:00

After 9 months, 11 countries, and thousands of miles on trains, planes, buses, boats, elephants, pick up trucks, horses, paragliders, and on foot, we are finally back home. And to be completely honest it's a lovely feeling!

We had the most amazing time on our travels, and enjoyed, if not every minute of it, at least the great majority of the time we were away. The highs of incredible natural beauty, the friendliness of strangers, and the excitement of the unknown by far outweighed the lows of the odd stomach bug or travel weariness.

In retrospect, I think we did most things right with our travels. Not because of any particular knowledge or expertise but mainly just by luck and intuition. The timing of our trip coincided nicely with the greater scheme of moving to England. The time spent travelling was long enough to completely take our minds off all that we wanted not to think about, but not too long for us to get bored of travelling itself.

We were also incredibly lucky not to have anything stolen from us. We did lose a few things here and there, just because we forgot to pick them up when we moved on, but nothing essential was left behind... I think.

We have tried to list our top 5 countries, towns, natural wonders, restaurants, toilets, modes of transportation, etc. but when you see so many places, especially when they are so different from each other, it gets tricky. I will, however, attempt the impossible, the mother of all listings, the top 5 of the entire trip. Here Goes:

1. Nature in New Zealand and Australia

Franz Josef glacier, NZ

Banks Peninsula, NZ

Mount Cook, NZ

Uluru, Aus

Whitsundays, Aus

Twelve Apostles, Great Ocean Rd., Aus

2. Food in China

Stick-meat in Beijing

Street kitchen in Shangri La

Dried tofu and noodle soup in Beijing

3. The emptiness of Siberia and Mongolia

Horseriding in Mongolia

Trans-Siberian railway, Russia

Olkhon Island, Russia

Again, Olkhon Island, Russia

4. All the wonderful people we met

Jakki, Piotr, Jegor, and others in St. Petersburg

Andy & Rob in Terelj, Mongolia

Hilde & Janne in Yangshuo, China

Neil & Julie in Tiger Leaping Gorge, China

Ingo & Andy in Vang Vieng, Laos

Christmas in Vientiane with Andy, Laura, & Zoe

With Emma and Phil in Cape Tribulation, Australia

5. Unpredictability of South East Asia

Another interesting form of transport in Laos

Andy loading a moped on the bus to Vientiane

Foot massage by fish in Kuala Lumpur

Sleeper bus designed for dwarves in Vietnam

I might change my mind about this list tomorrow, and if you asked Julie she might have a completely different top 5 altogether. I guess that is the beaty of travelling.

But now it's time to stop living in the memories of our travels and start to look in the future; meet all the friends we have missed, eat some Marmite on toast, and start planning our next trip!

Kuala Lumpur and Pulau Pangkor

2009-05-10T12:24:00.007+03:00

Kuala Lumpur was really nice, and not just because of the fancy hotel and the showers! We spent a lot of time shopping in the many markets; the idea was to get some souvenirs but we ended up with plenty of new stuff for ourselves too. For some reason I couldn't drag Mikko from the shops and into a bar, which has NEVER happened before!

We also went to Merdeka Square (parliament buildings) and up the KL tower for some nice city views, and in the evenings we had some really nice meals. There's all kinds of food here, a bit Chinese and a bit Indian and a bit Western (which we don't usually bother with except for breakfasts!), and it's all really good!

From KL we travelled up to Pulau Pangkor in search of our island paradise, and this time we got lucky! It's a quiet place with just a few restaurants to choose from, no real bars (being a muslim country) but it has a lovely beach, some resident monkeys and a really nice laid back garden in the hotel where you can just chill out for hours reading a book, playing games, drinking a beer and meeting people.

We seem to have got ourselves into a bit of a routine, which goes a bit like this:

Get up (no earlier than 10am!)
Walk down the street and grab some breakfast/lunch
Spend a few hours on the beach until we start to burn or get thirsty
Go back home for a shower
Drink a couple of beers in the garden while playing chess
Go for a walk and get something to eat
A few beers back at the hotel garden while playing cards
Bed

It's a great routine! Only on one day did we deviate from this when we rented a moped and drove to the other side of the island because we needed to get to the bank. That involved some very scary winding roads but we also took in the sights of the islands which is not much, just a few beach views and a chinese temple which for some weird reason has disney characters in front of it!

We have booked our two final nights back in our posh hotel in Kuala Lumpur but until then, unless we get bored, we will be staying here observing the agenda above :-)

Back in Asia

2009-05-06T06:12:00.006+03:00

As much as we enjoyed New Zealand and Australia, after almost four months in the region we were ready to return to Asia. And we were not disappointed; the food is great, prices are low, and you can still find the most fantastically kitsch glittery trinkets at the markets.

Our first stop after Australia was Singapore, a good stepping stone into Asia, where it's hard to say whether the culture is more eastern or western. A couple of days there was enough as it's not that big a place. We ate well (a curry hot enough to make your eyelids sweat in Little India, and a table full of Chinese goodness in Chinatown), tried not to melt in the hot and humid air, and wandered around more or less aimlessly.

The next step was to catch a bus to Malaysia. We had decided to go to the east coast and visit Tioman Island in the hope of finding a beach paradise where to chill for a few days. We spent the first night in Mersing, a small coastal town, because we arrived too late in the night to get a ferry to the island. Unfortunately there was some kind of carnival in town and most hotels were fully booked. We finally found a room in a hotel that on closer inspection didn't have a shower at all. And I mean no shower anywhere in the hotel, not in the room, not in the corridor, not even in the garden. Oh well, its only for one night, we thought.

In the morning we went to the jetty and were reminded again that we're back in Asian time as the ferry turned out to depart over two hours after it was supposed to. Not that it mattered too much, we had gone without a wash for a couple of days, so a bit more sweating in the sun while we waited for the boat wasn't going to make much difference.

The island turned out to be really nice and relaxing, with basic "bungalows" (garden sheds) lined along the shoreline. There wasn't much of a beach or proper showers or much to do on the island though. So, we had a good day and night there but decided against a longer stay. In the morning we gathered our worldly possessions and headed back to mainland. This time we were given so many different "definite" times for the ferry departure that we knew to expect a long wait. Sure enough, the ferry arrived almost precisely at a time that didn't match any of those given to us.

After the brief island visit we headed to Kuala Lumpur. After not having a proper wash in a few days now we decided to treat ourselves to a nice hotel. A warm, powerful shower and an air conditioned room feel like heaven after roughing it for a few days in the tropics. We even have a view of the KL Tower and the Petronas Twin Towers from our window (you have to push your face right on the glass to see them, but still). The best thing is that we are only paying a bit more for this luxury than did for a sad, showerless excuse of a hotel in Mersing. So, it's a couple of days of luxury for us now, and then we'll be heading to the west coast and to Pulau Pengkor in search of beach life before we return to Europe.

...and further up the coast...

2009-04-28T11:14:00.012+03:00

Airlie Beach has a nice beach, but apart from that it's basically a strip of bars playing awful dance music, packed full of beautiful young party people in very few clothes. Maybe I'm just too old to appreciate it, but I thought it was one of the most frightful places we've been in Australia! Fortunately we didn't have to spend a long time there, and got ourselves booked onto a day trip to the Whitsunday islands which made up for our miserable night spent trying to find a decent pub in Airlie beach (which didn't exist).

The Whitsundays were beautiful, and the whole boat trip was really nice and scenic and relaxing. We went out to a reef very close to the Great Barrier Reef (unfortunately we didn't make it to the real thing) and did some pretty good snorkeling there.

Then we went onto Whitsunday, the main island, and spent some time on Whitehaven beach which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It was beautiful, but one of the annoying things about Australia is that there are a lot of dangerous jellyfish and stingrays and things in the water so it's not possible to swim in many places. Then we went onto a smaller island and had a round of mini golf before heading back to the boat.

From Airlie beach we continued up the coast. I really can't remember all the places now, but the weather has been so nice and hot (FINALLY!) that we've spent a lot of time lounging on beaches and by the campsite pools. One of the highlights was the Atherton Tablelands which is a rainforest area just outside of Cairns, full of narrow winding roads, nice waterfalls and walks.

We treated ourselves to a proper bed that night, since the mattresses our van are not the greatest, and stayed in a kind of eco-hostel in a town called Yungaburra. The hostel staff run free platypus-spotting tours by the river in the village so we went along on that- didn't spot anything, but it was a nice walk all the same.

When we got up to Cairns we met up with Emma and Phil once again, who have now been tempted into camping after hearing our camping tales. They now have a brand new sparkly Jucy campervan with TV, fridge, etc. It put Ivan to shame, but we had the last laugh when Phil went to start the car and the battery was completely dead! We spent a couple of days not doing very much in the city and then went a little further up the coast to Cape Tribulation which is a really pretty area with beaches, gorges and rainforest walks.

That's as far north as we got though, as we had to return Ivan in Cairns today. Now we have just two more days left in Australia before we head off to Singapore. From there we'll make our way in Malaysia and have a few weeks of beach fun and relaxation before we head... HOME!!! Yes, it has come to that time; we have booked ourselves a flight from Kuala Lumpur to London Stansted on May 20th. In some ways we're really looking forward to going home, but now it's so close we're not so sure anymore. It's going to be fantastic to see everyone again, to sleep in a decent bad and not be living out of a backpack all the time. But I'm a bit worried that once we're settled with a house and steady jobs then the monotony is going to set in and we'll wish we were travelling again! We're already thinking about our next trip... And the one after that!

Up the coast

2009-04-19T09:10:00.003+03:00

The first two weeks after we left Sydney were pretty wet. In fact, it didn't really stop raining at all. We visited some really nice national parks and quaint coastal towns, but when the visibility is zero it is quite hard to enjoy the scenery. So instead we stayed cooped up in Ivan and played cards. There are worse things.

At Easter we were due to meet up with Andy and Laura, who we had been travelling with in Laos and Thailand. Our destination was Byron Bay, one of the busiest resort towns on the east coast. It was Easter, there was a huge blues festival in town, and we had no booking. We were actually stupid enough to be surprised we found nowhere to stay when we arrived. Being seasoned travellers we didn't panic but instead decided to drive to the nearby hippie town of Nimbin for some reflection. The town turned out to be full of stoned old hippies and psychedelic museums, and more importantly it did not provide us with a revelation to solve our accommodation problems so we decided to drive on. In the end we managed to find a camp site set up at the local rugby club in the town of Mullumbimby, just a short drive out of Byron Bay. It was also the same town where our friends stayed so naturally we headed to the local pub to reward ourselves after a hard days work. The next couple days are a bit hazy.

From Byron Bay we continued up the coast in the rain, skipping a fair few places, until we reached Hervey Bay, where the rain finally stopped. In town there was very little to do but we met Emma and Phil there, who we had previously met in Cambodia, so we decided to stay a couple of days and enjoy the sunshine.

Sun continued to shine and we headed further north. After Hervey Bay we stoppped at Claireview for a night. Not much there but the camp site bar was full of local characters who kept us entertained. From there we drove up to Airlie Beach, and tomorrow we are taking a boat to the Whitsunday Islands.

On from Sydney

2009-04-06T07:27:00.010+03:00

On the last night (or what was supposed to be our last night) in Sydney we went to climb up the Harbour Bridge. It's probably not something we would've ever considered doing normally (mainly because I'm a bit funny about climbing things when you can see the ground beneath you) but my dear sister had decided that this would be a good belated christmas present from the family (she did it herself when she was in Sydney last year). So, feeling rather queasy but not wanting to waste a present we went for it. Of course it paid off. It was a bit scary in places (for all those tonnes of iron, it bounces quite a lot!) but the views of Sydney harbour as the sun was setting more than made up for it, and the more we walked, the more I relaxed (I think going at night was a good idea though: when you look down, you see less!!).

The next day we were supposed to pick up our van. However, after being kept waiting for a couple of hours we were forced to leave without the van as our credit card was declined. A bit confused, we went to the cash point only to find that it wouldn't give us even the smallest amount of cash! It was the middle of the night in Finland, so we had to wait several hours until we could call the bank, only to discover that the card had been stopped as we'd exceeded our credit limit by quite a lot! Luckily it was the end of the month and so it cleared the following day, and we were able to go and pick up the van without too much of a problem... the staff at the rental place still looked at us like criminals though!

We've now been travelling for a few days. We were a bit disappointed with the van in the beginning; it's slow, it's cold, the accelerator pedal is sticky so it lurches forward a lot, and it shakes madly whenever it reaches 90 km/h. We named him Ivan after someone really annoying that we met in China! However, after a few days we're starting to get used to his quirks and I'm not sure anymore if it's fair to call him Ivan but we haven't come up with a better name.

The first few days were pretty uneventful; it rained a lot, so we just hung around waiting for it to stop as we didn't want to miss anything. By the third day we'd reached the Hunter Valley (another reknowned wine region) and the weather picked up, so I treated Mikko to a drive around the vineyards while he got to taste all the wines. Then we moved inland a bit to a weird town called Tamworth which is famous for country and western music. There was no music festival going on when we got there, but there was a rodeo show in support of the victims of the bush fires in Victoria, so we went to check that out. We didn't really fit in (not having cowboy hats and checked shirts like everyone else!), but we had a good time anyway. At one point, one of the crazy bulls decided he was going to try and make it over the barrier to join the spectators. Fortunatly he didn't make it but he gave everyone quite a fright and I'm happy we weren't sitting any further forward!

The next day there was a pumpkin festival (I told you it was a weird place!) so of course we had to go and check that out. Needless to say, a lot of pumpkins of weird and wonderful sizes, plus a guy shearing sheep while wearing a blindfold :-)

After that we had a nice drive through the countryside, did some walking and camped in New England national park where it rained a hell of a lot once again ("I bet that's why they called it 'New England'", said Mikko). Today, a bit more driving and a bit more walking, and a bit more rain- but at least that made for some nice waterfalls!

Until the next time!

Blue Mountains

2009-03-27T07:06:00.011+02:00

Hi again! Just returned from 3 nights in the Blue Mountains which were fantastic. And Andrew was kind enough to lend us his car for the trip which meant we could look around a bit by ourselves and didn't have to rely on public transport.

From Sydney we drove out to a small town called Katoomba, which is nothing that special but it's a great base to explore the area. Having said that, I was quite exhausted (I think it was something to do with Andy's sofa bed, and Mikko's tendency to hog it all!) so the first thing we did after checking into the hostel was to find the TV room and watch a few old films! In the evening we did venture out in the evening though to see the town's most visited attraction- a rock formation known as the Three Sisters, floodlit by night.

The following day we went for a walk. It was only 10 kilometres or so but we really struggled, maybe partly because of the heat, but also because we're becoming really, really unfit! The walk went along some cliffs, by waterfalls, by the Three Sisters again (much more impressive in the daytime), down some treacherously steep steps and into the forest. Fortunately we didn't have to come up the same way because there was a small railway (apparently the steepest in the world!) so we took that instead, which was pretty fast and scary but surely beats climbing mountains in 30 degree heat!

The next day we were again pretty shattered so we took it easy, just driving around north of Katoomba and stopping at a series of mountain lookout points, really fantastic scenery. I didn't expect any of Australia's scenery to amaze me after the sights of New Zealand. Again, I'm completely wrong!

Today we made our way back to Sydney but on the way we decided to stop at a wildlife park. We almost didn't, because we got hopelessly lost and it started to rain heavily, but then after giving up on the idea we discovered we were actually on the raod we'd been looking for, and the sun broke out again! Good that it did, because the park was pretty good. There were hundreds of kangaroos, wombats, koalas, wallabies and exotic birds. We've seen quite a few kangaroos and even some sleeping koalas in the wild since we've been in the country, but this is the first time we got to pet them and feed them (which sounds silly, but I'm a sucker for that kind of thing!!).

Now we're back in Sydney and the weekend's about to begin! So we're off to enjoy that before we head off up north on Monday.

Sydney

2009-03-25T00:28:00.011+02:00

Sydney is one of those places where you could quite happily stay forever. At least, if you didn't need to worry about work and other such inconveniences.

After our kayaking we went to see some sights, had great meals and just generally enjoyed the good life. We had a really nice barbeque at Andrew's place one night, and Andrew took me to see a local Rugby game (rugby league, not union - apparently there is a difference) another night. I only have a rudimentary understanding of the game, but as far as I can gather, a dislocated foot and a couple of near fights (the first on the field, the second amongst the fans) amount to a good game. In any case, much beer and fun was had.

Another couple of friends that we have made on our travels were also in Sydney at the same time as us, and it was really nice to meet with Jakki (who we met in Russia) and Zoe (Laos). It seems that everyone makes their way to Sydney sooner or later.

I forgot to mention this earlier, but on our first night in Sydney we went to a Bottle-O (off-licence) and found a Finnish "Pirkka" beer can in the chiller! This is the cheapest and nastiest beer you can find in Finland, and how it ever made it outside the country is beyond me. But there it was, and I just had to give it a try. Yes, you guessed it, it was rank!

We also managed to sort out the rest of our journey in Australia. We booked a van for a month to drive up the east coast to Cairns, and we found a fairly cheap flight from Cairns to Singapore (we still plan to do Singapore and Malaysia on our way home). We also checked the dates on our bookings (many, many times!) to avoid making the same mistakes as last time we tried to rent a van. I think we're ok.

We can pick up our van next Monday, so in the meantime we will visit the Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney, and then come back to Sydney for one more weekend, before driving up north.

Adelaide to Sydney

2009-03-20T08:27:00.014+02:00

The Barossa valley wine tour was great! We got to go to four different wineries; all different, from the oldest and most well-known (but not excellent) Jacob's Creek to smaller boutique shops that don't produce wines for the supermarkets. We got to try about 6 different wines in each so we came away quite tipsy! Our taste in wines hasn't changed (we still love Shiraz, we quite like Cabernet Sauvignon and Julie hates Riesling!) but it was nice to try new things and learn something about wine production, and the whole Barossa region has stunning scenery.

From Adelaide we managed to get our first car relocation job, back to Melbourne. We were specifically looking to drive this route since you can drive via the Great Ocean Road, apparently one of the nicest drives in the country.

It was indeed beautiful, and it was nice to be back on the road again. We had really terrible rain and wind on the second day which meant that we had to stop driving earlier than planned, and then we had a massive amount of driving on the final day, but we managed to see most of the sights on the way, although a bit rushed!

We decided at some point on the journey that we also wanted to drive from Melbourne to Sydney rather than fly, but we kept checking the internet and couldn't find any cars that needed moving in that direction. Still, when we arrived to drop the van off in Melbourne I thought it couldn't hurt to ask if they had anything that needed to go to Sydney and we were amazed when they told us that we could have a campervan for free if we could get it to Sydney within 3 days! So after a brief divertion back to St. Kilda (to pick up one bag that we'd left in storage there) we were back on the road straight away!

It was another nice drive, but by the time we got to Sydney we were knackered. Obviously, Australia is a massive country, but you really only feel that when you're driving. We drove for about 7 hours every day for three days, then you look at the map and see you've covered just the tiniest fraction of the country, whereas you could have circled New Zealand in that time (not that you'd want to do that in 3 days!). So, this is probably the end of our van relocating adventures. It was nice to try it and we saved ourselves some money, but we decided it's better to take the time and see the country properly, so we'll probably be renting a van again for the next stretch up the east coast.

For the next week at least though, we will be in Sydney putting our feet up. We're staying with Andrew, an Aussie we met in Vietnam who's now back home again. He lives in a lovely place close to the centre with amazing balcony views over the bay. I spent most of yesterday sleeping out on the balcony and getting some rest!

A mate of his has a kayak which he very kindly arranged for us to borrow this morning, so we spent a few hours out on the bay getting some exercise (which we really need, actually!). We haven't seen the centre of Sydney yet, since we came straight to Andrew's place yesterday, so it was amazing to be out in the middle of the bay and suddenly spot the famous opera house!

Tomorrow, Andrew's housemate Dani has offered to take us into town to see the sights, so really looking forward to that. Sydney seems like a beautiful city and we haven't even seen the centre yet!

Alice Springs and the Outback

2009-03-10T08:24:00.015+02:00

We arrived in Alice Springs in the burning heat, with no car to take us to Uluru (we didn't manage to get a van for the dates/price we were after) and our accommodation plans based on the hope that a bloke called Aaron would meet us and offer a couch to sleep on.

We hadn't run out of our luck though. At the airport we found a tourist information booth, and booked ourselves not a car but a 3-day tour of the main sites in the area. We had also booked our returning flight one day too late for our original plans, which turned out to be lucky because we were only able to get on this tour the following morning, and so had we got our flights right we wouldn't have been back in town in time. Sweet!

Safe in the knowledge that we were going to see Uluru, we headed out to town to buy some swimming gear, which we hadn't anticipated needing in the desert.

After a bit of shopping and a well deserved pint (or two, to be perfectly honest) in a western style saloon we still hadn't heard anything from Aaron. Slightly concerned at this point, we decided to send him a text message to see why he didn't want to meet us. It turned out he had been calling us but our phone claimed to be switched off! Damn Aussie sim card! Five minutes later we were picked up from outside the saloon and chauffeured to Aaron's place for our first Aussie barbecue.

Aaron turned out to be a really nice guy who had a big house with several bedrooms, and a pool in the garden. We are starting to really get into this couchsurfing business; you just can't argue with good company, fine food and a cold beer by the pool! Aaron was also very patient with me when he was explaining the rules of cricket, a game I have failed to understand several times. I can't say that I'm a real fan yet, but at least I can make an educated guess at why the players suddenly start cheering when seemingly nothing happens.

Before the tour we had one day to explore Alice Springs, so we decided to do the cultural thing for a change (and also because the air-conditioned indoors were just too inviting). We visited the Royal Flying Doctors and the Alice Springs Cultural Centre. Both were good experiences and gave us more of an idea about the history of the place and also the vastness of the area. If I remember correctly, the area serviced by the flying doctors is equal to roughly 21 times the size of Finland.

After another pleasant night at Aaron's, we were picked up at 6 in the morning for our tour. We were a bit worried about the whole idea of going on a tour because we much prefer to do things on our own, but it seems that this time we made the right decision. Our tour group was very nice and very international. Luckily our group had no 18-year-old Americans (no offence, but, you know). Our guide was very knowledgeable and fun, and we learnt a lot more about the Aboriginal traditions and culture as well as geology and biology of the outback than we would have learnt on our own.

After a few hours of driving on straight desert roads we reached our first main attraction, Kings Canyon. We did a three-hour hike in the scorching desert (although the locals thought that the 35 degrees was quite mild and pleasant) with a stop for a swim in a natural water hole half way through (hence the shopping for swimmers). The walk was beautiful in an arid desert way, and certainly got us ready for lunch.

In the evening we stopped at bush camp in the middle of nowhere - quite literally - and rolled out our swags and sleeping bags on the ground around a fireplace. Crawling into your sleeping bag and gazing at the clear stary sky after a day that involved a lot of driving and walking was a lovely feeling.

The next morning we were up before sunrise and moving on to Kata Tjuta (aka the Olgas). There we did another nice walk, slightly shorter this time, but equally nice. The Olgas are rock formations that rise from the ground at a 20 degree angle, and look bizarre to say the least.

From there we went to the Cultural Centre to learn more about what we had just seen. In the evening we headed to Uluru to catch the sunset. Even though it seemed that every tourist in the southern hemisphere had decided to do the same, we really enjoyed having our dinner while watching the last rays of sun change the colour of the rock. After dark it was another night out in the open, but this time in the relative comfort of a camping ground (showers, yay!).

The early mornings continued as we had to be up to see the sun rise at Uluru. This time we found a more quiet spot for viewing, and munched our breakfast while the sun was rising behind the rock. After that we went for a walk around Uluru, which took a couple of hours, and then started making our way back towards Alice Springs.

We arrived in Alice Springs in the evening and had a nice evening with Aaron and another couple of couch surfers that were also staying in his place. The next morning it was time to fly back to Adelaide.

Overall, we had a great time in Alice Springs and on the tour. Considering how thoroughly we had managed to screw up all our bookings, we landed very nicely on our feet; making new friends, enjoying the beautiful scenery, and not having to drive the entire 1000 kilometer loop in the desert more than made up for the fact that we didn't manage to do it on our own.

We are now back in Adelaide, and will be going on a wine tour of the Barossa region tomorrow (I'm pretty sure we have the dates right this time), so we will soon have another tour to report on. Let's see if we change our minds about the touring life.

Organising (and screwing things up!) in Australia

2009-03-04T12:01:00.008+02:00

Hello again and greetings from Australia!

So far so good, although we've spending so much time on the internet organising stuff that I don't feel we've really had the chance to settle down and enjoy it yet! We decided after New Zealand that we had spent a little more money over there than we'd anticipated, so we were going to do Australia with a different (more thrifty!) strategy. Firstly, we registered with a website called couchsurfers.com which is basically a network of travelling-minded people who use each others couches/ spare rooms when travelling, and who host travellers themselves when they're at home. We thought this sounded great, because not only do you get a free nights sleep, you also get to meet local people for a change instead of fellow travellers (no offence, fellow travellers!) Secondly, we decided that rather than rent a van for the entire duration of our stay here, we would look out for vans that need relocating somewhere else, and, erm, relocate them! Basically it works that you pay about a dollar a day for the vehicle, the company gives you some petrol allowance and you get a set amount of time to drive it from A to B. So this is our new plan of getting across Australia, although obviously that's not going to work all the time!

We arrived in Melbourne and were met at the airport by Laura and Andy (who we travelled across Laos with) and spent the next few days catching up with them. None of us are really city people so we stayed in a hostel in St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, by the beach.

I suppose we could've been anywhere really, since we spent most of the time inside our hostel room challenging each other to card games (we've played more card games on this trip than in the rest of our lives; it's getting to be quite an addiction!). Oh, we also did one very silly touristy thing though: we drove to Pin Oak Court, a.k.a. Ramsay Street in the TV soap Neighbours! I have to say it didn't look much like how I remembered, and it was surprisingly small!

Laura and Andy left us after 3 days as they have a job starting, but hopefully we'll meet up again after it finishes. We have also arranged to meet up again with Neil (who we met in China and walked the Tiger Leaping Gorge with) who is about to finish his trip and return to his hometown Melbourne, but he's not going to be there for another week or so, so in the meantime we decided to make a trip to Alice Springs and Uluru (Ayers rock). As luck would have it, there were some really cheap flights going there via Adelaide.

So we took a flight to Adelaide, and here we tried the couch surfing service for the first time. A bloke called Steven responded to our request within just 5 minutes, and even offered to pick us up at the airport! Amazing! When we arrived at the airport we were wandering around for a while with no sign of Steven and I started to wonder if the couch surfing was really going to be our thing. But it turned out that Steven was there all along, and Mikko and I had walked right past him, despite him holding up a sign with our names on! Steven's really nice, really interesting to talk to, and a great host. We had a wonderful night's sleep on the sofa bed last night. Today we went into Adelaide to have a quick look around, then when we got back this evening we spent a few hours playing computer games.

Tomorrow we have an early flight on to Alice Springs, from where we hoped to hire a van for a few days and drive ourselves to Uluru and surrounding areas. One small hitch... Mikko has just checked our van rental confirmation details and it seems that instead of renting it from the 5th to 9th of March, we've got it from the 5th to 9th of April!! I tried to call them to see if there's any way we can change the booking, but they had already gone home for the day. So we'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out if they can sort it out for us, or if we've lost our money. FRUSTRATING!! Still, we've had the most amazing luck so far on our trip; we've found amazingly good deals on flights/ van rentals, etc., so I can't be too angry. Something had to backfire at some point, and I don't think we can blame anyone but ourselves for this cock-up!

More from us soon! Bye for now ;-)

Last few days in NZ :-(

2009-02-22T01:26:00.010+02:00

Hi again. Still in New Zealand at the moment but only for another 6 days before we move on to Australia. This is one place I will be very sad to leave!

Since the last entry, we have been making our way up north slowly. From the glaciers we followed the coast up towards the North Island, stopping at Westport (a weird little place that seemed to have more churches/ religious centres than houses, and no people!), then Kaiteriteri (a cute little beach town where we enjoyed doing nothing for a couple of days) then Nelson (stayed at a hostel here for the first time in NZ, full of pretentious, annoying people half our age, one of who "wanted to live life the way nature intended" - Nature, it seemed, intended for the moron to lounge about in the jacuzzi all day in his fancy Billabong shorts. Needless to say we got the hell out after one night.) then Picton (quite a boring little place, but we needed to be here to catch the inter-island ferry).

We then made the 4 hour ferry crossing over from Picton into Wellington (accompanied by a lorry-load of cows whose smell was overwhelming and didn't do much for my sea-sickness!). We stayed in Wellington for 4 days. It was the first place in New Zealand that really felt like a city, and as cities go, it was a really nice one. It's full of culture and has all the shops, restaurants and everything you'd expect from a city, but it's also very scenic and clean and friendly. I'm sure I could live in Wellington.

But our main reason for visiting was to see an old university friend of mine, Emily. Emily moved over to NZ at around the same time as Mikko and I moved to Finland, and we haven't seen each other since. So it was great to catch up with her, and to finally meet her lovely husband Leigh. The two of them were really great hosts, giving us a personalised tour of the city, and taking us out for meals. We really didn't want to leave but we knew we had to as we still had the rest of the North Island to see.

From Wellington we moved on to Tongariro. Tongariro has a lot of volcanoes and is supposed to have one of the most interesting and scenic day-walks in the country. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the information centre to check the route details they were warning of very severe weather conditions (wind and rain) for the next few days so unfortunately we had to move on as we no longer had enough spare time to wait around for the weather to clear. The next day was indeed the most attrocious weather we had encountered in New Zealand and we felt quite glad to be warm and dry, playing cards in the back of Kylie the van, and not cold and wet and lost in fog in the mountains!

The day before yesterday we arrived in Rotorua which is a nice little place although a little bit touristy. It has a large Maori population, and as a result a lot of Maori tourist attractions. We booked ourselves in on a Maori cultural evening which included some singing, tribal war-dance, a trip through the bush to see some glow worms and a large feast cooked in the traditional Maori way (food is cooked slowly, underground, over hot rocks). It was a delicious meal and a really entertaining show. It was very commercialised, but then, how else were we going to see all these ancient rituals?

Besides the Maori culture, the whole Rotorua area is famous for its geothermal activity; every hotel seems to have thermal pools and spas and the whole place smells eggy! But you do get used to that. We had to check out the huge geysers and the bubbling mud pools in the Te Puia park. Really impressive stuff!

The park also had a Kiwi house (the Kiwi is a native, endangered bird which can't fly) and so after hearing so much about these birds we finally got to see a few of them.

Today we'll be moving on up North to the Coromandel peninsular for a few days before we finish our NZ trip in Auckland. We will also have to return Kylie there, which will not be easy as she's been such a lovely little van. A few of you commented on her in a previous post: you'll be pleased to know that we've been looking after her really well; she developed a squeak at one point but we took her into a garage and the nice mechanic gave her some oil and she was much happier after that! But we did have a small mishap the other day when we accidentally left her lights on and 6 hours later the battery was completely flat. But again, someone came to the rescue with some jump leads and after running her around town for a while she has completely healed! Oh, and Mikko and I are both fit and healthy too :-)

Kaukana kotoa

2009-02-12T04:11:00.006+02:00

Otetaan valilla talla toisella kotimaisella. Taalla maailman aarissa ei valitettavasti aakkosiin kuulu meitin pistehiset kirjainten paalle, joten tolkun tulkinta jaa lukijalle.

Tahan mennessa reissu on siis kulkenut maitse lapi Venajan, Mongolian, Kiinan ja Kaakkois-Aasian. Bangkokissa jouduttiin ensimmaista kertaa lentokoneeseen, muuten olisi edessa ollut parin kuukauden seilaus Uuteen Seelantiin.

Kaikista kolutuista paikoista tama uuden karhea Seelanti on kaikkein lahinna kotiseutujen elamaa: taalla syodan pottuja ja juodaan viinia. Aasialaisen riisiyliannostuksen jalkeen perunat katoaa kitaan hirmuvauhtia. Mustaamakkaraa ei kuitenkaan ole missaan tullut vastaan, eli ei tama sentaan mikaan sivistysvaltio ole. Uuden Seelannin suuri kulinaristinen lohtu on "Moro"-suklaapatukat, joita mutustellessa ei voi olla muistelematta maailman ainoaa paikkaa. Niiden ostaminen on myos lystia kun voi vain kavella kauppaan ja murahtaa etta moro, selvalla tampereella, eika kukaan katso kieroon.

Uuden Seelannin elaimet herattavat meikalaisessa kummastusta: linnut eivat lenna (Kiivit ja pingviini) ja hylkeilla on turkki (fur seals). Olon tekevat hieman kotoisemmaksi santakarpaset (sand fly), jotka ottavat pirullisuudessaan vahvasti mittaa kotoisista hyttysista, usko vaan etta syyhyaa!

Maisemiensa puolesta Uusi Seelanti ei juuri kotia muistuta, taalla kun on vuoria, vuonoja ja sademetsia vahan turhan tiheaan. Ihmisetkin ovat kovasti puheliaampia kuin kotopuolessa, kaupantaditkin aina kyselee, etta mites menee ja mista tulee? Vaan kaikkeen tottuu, hidas hamalainenkin.

Seuraava kohde reissulla on Australia, joten kotiseutukoulun vaihto-opiskelu sen kun jatkuu, mutta ei menna asioiden edelle...

Extremish

2009-02-08T08:15:00.014+02:00

Queenstown was full of all kinds of extreme sport opportunities that you can think of. However, we decided to start it easy and went for a walk (can you smell the adrenaline?).

We ended up walking to the summit of the hill overlooking Queenstown and not only had nice views but also found a little kiosk offering paragliding. Julie had always wanted to try it, and it doesn't take that much to talk me into throwing myself off a mountain, so we decided to book ourselves in for a flight the next day.

The next morning we were picked up by the wrong paragliding company, then swapped from one van to another, with equally frightened looking people taking our places. After all this human trafficing we were finally on our way to the launch site up Coronet Peak.

Paragliding was great fun (despite the look of horror on my face in all the pictures), and the views over the mountains and lakes were spectacular. After the run down the mountain side and the leap into thin air the ride got really quite steady and comfortable. We even did a few sharp bends and spirals!

After Queenstown we drove up to Wanaka, a nice little town by a beautiful lake. We stopped there for lunch, considered doing another walk, but then decided to rent kayaks instead.

Next stop was Fox glacier. You can get almost to the glaciers edge by yourself, and we did a couple of walks around the glacier and got some nice views. Apart from the glacier there was not much in the town, and we headed off to the next glacier.

Franz Josef glacier was just 30 minutes drive away, and this time we decided to do a guided walk on the glacier. We opted for the full day walk, which included 6 hours on ice. The walk turned out to be one of the nicest experiences so far. The glacier is massive, and the guides managed to find some beautiful blue caves and nice viewpoints for us. I went in the "fast" group, which turned out to be somewhat slowed down by a chap who was afraid of heights (and he just had to put himself in the most adventurous group, didnt he?). We also had an American lady in our group who sang hymns as we plodded on and quoted glacier facts from "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown". Religion and cartoons can be a dangerous cocktail, it seems.

New Zealand, South island

2009-02-02T09:36:00.016+02:00

Hi again, and sorry it's been so long since the last blog. We've been out in the wilderness quite a bit, with limited internet access!
So we're now in New Zealand. It was a bit of a sudden decision to come here which is why we rushed through Thailand so quickly. The reason for the sudden change of plan was that we realised we'd arrive in New Zealand in the middle of winter if we'd carried on travelling south at our current rate. Plus, we found a super-cheap flight from Bangkok to New Zealand and we didn't want to miss out on the offer.

So, we took that flight. There was a small hitch at Bangkok airport when they asked to see our return flight out of New Zealand. We didn't have one (because we didn't know we needed one) but fortunately we had a good hour before check-in closed, and so we went to an internet cafe and found ourselves yet another bargain flight from Auckland to Melbourne! Problem solved. Then we took our first flight of this entire trip and within 24 hours arrived in Christchurch.

New Zealand is a fantastic country. It is a complete change from Asia. Asia was excellent, exotic, beautiful but after 4 months there we needed a change and a rest, and New Zealand seems to be the perfect place to wind down. It's so easy to be in a place where everyone speaks your language, where they eat food you can identify and where you don't have to haggle for everything you buy. It's a home from home.

We had a day exploring Christchurch, which was a nice enough town, but we were eager to get on the road and explore the countryside. So on our second day we went to pick up the van we had reserved. She's a great little van. We named her Kylie (she just looked like a Kylie!), and she will be our transport and our accommodation for the six weeks we spend in New Zealand.

From Christchurch we drove south through the Banks peninsular, inland to Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook, down to Dunedin, along the south coast, through Fiordland and up to Queenstown where we are now. All the way the scenery has been absolutely stunning, from snow-capped mountains to clear blue lakes to alpine forest to fields of deer and sheep to golden surfing beaches.

We've been staying in campsites, most of which have been in really beautiful locations, and have a campers kitchen where you can make your own food. It's been really nice to cook our own meals again and make the things that we craving when we were in Asia. Our first meal was spaghetti on toast with cheddar cheese on top. Strange what you miss when you can't get it!

Fiordland was especially wonderful. We arrived in the village of Te Anau and booked one of the hikes (or "tramps" as they're called here). We originally wanted to do the Milford track which is supposed to be one the most scenic walks in the world, but it seemed that everyone else wanted to do it too and there was no space for us, so we settled for the Kepler track, which is a 4 day (3 night) 65km hike. I found it quite hard going, since we have done very little in the way of exercise in the last few months, and rather too much drinking! On the way from Christchurch to Te Anau we did several day-walks to prepare ourselves but in retrospect it was probably not enough. Still, when we emerged from the forest after an all-day uphill climb and saw the views for the first time we realised it was worth the pain in our calves and shoulders.

The excellent views continued all through the second day as we walked along a ridge between peaks. We met some great people on the walk too, and when we finished on the fourth day, even though I was absolutely knackered and was walking like a penguin, I was sad that it came to an end. I did cheer up in the evening though, when we enjoyed a beer in the campsite jacuzzi!

After Kepler we drove up to Milford Sound. Since we couldn't get on that trek we decided to take a boat trip. The scenery there is undescribable. Mountains rise up on either side of you, into the clouds, and the sun shines through the clouds... it was magical. If we ever come back to New Zealand we are definitely going to book the trek well in advance!

Now we're in Queenstown. Most people come here to do some kind of extreme sport like bungy jumping or skydiving; they have everything here. I didn't really think we'd be doing anything like that but now I'm here I'm a bit tempted by paragliding and Mikko is even thinking about doing a skydive. If nothing else, we will climb the Coronet peak tomorrow and take the luge/ toboggan down. But that's for the next post :-)

Thailand

2009-01-14T06:42:00.007+02:00

If Christmas in Vientiane was quite unusual, then it has to be said that the new year in Luang Prabang wasn't too normal either. The town itself is a quiet little place in northern Laos; It seems that every other local is a monk or a tuk tuk driver, and the pace of life is nice and slow.

However, on new year's eve we managed to find a street full of late opening pubs (normally they close before midnight), with everything from Beerlao to buckets of whiskey on the menu. The night was far from quiet and the new year was received in style. The next morning when we were trying to find a new place to stay (no, we didn't get kicked out, the place was just overbooked) there was no sign of the mayhem of the previous night and the monks were walking down the streets in orange processions like always (to be honest, there are very few things more annoying than other people's serenity when you have a hangover, but you can't really go and shout at a monk).

We left Luang Prabang on a slow boat and sailed up the river towards Thailand. It took two 10 hour days on the boat to reach the Thai border and our bottoms were getting rather numb from the wooden seats but the scenery was beatiful, and the only other way to do the journey would have involved the "fast boats" that looked like motorised surfboards and had an incredible accident record.

In Thailand our first stop was Chiang Mai in the north. There isn't that much to do in the town itself but there are a lot of trekking and adventure travel possibilities just out of town. We signed up for a one day elephant tour. That turned out to be a truly excellent experience with riding, washing and feeding the elephants.

From Chiang Mai we caught a night train to Bangkok (the first train since Vietnam). Bangkok didn't quite live up to the expectations, although in fairness we only saw a very small part of the huge city. For me though, it seemed like any other big city. Maybe we just went to the wrong places.

Another reason for my lack of enthusiasm may have been the fact that we had booked ourselves flights from Bangkok to Christchurch, New Zealand, and I found it quite hard to concentrate on anything else. I don't really know much about New Zealand, but I think it will be a nice change from southeast Asia. We'll find out soon.

Christmas time in Laos!

2008-12-29T09:33:00.006+02:00

I think we both started to feel a little homesick in the days running up to Christmas. That's probably a little selfish of us, since I know many people would love to be in our place right now rather than back home in the cold, but still, when you think of your families and friends back home decorating their trees, wrapping up their presents, lighting candles, attending Christmas parties, you can't help but wish you were there. Christmas should be a time for family.

Unfortunately, this year that wasn't to be, but we were determined to get into the festive spirit and bring a little bit of Christmas to Laos. Along with Laura, Andy and Zoe, our travelling companions of the past week, we shopped for presents for each other, found ourselves some Santa hats (which we were not allowed to take off, no matter how hot!), sang some Christmas songs and played some games, and -in the absence of a Christmas meal- treated ourselves to a very nice Italian meal, followed by some wine and cheeses back at the hotel. All of the locals respectfully wished us a merry christmas as we paraded around the streets of Vientiane in our Santa hats, and all in all it felt very Christmassy despite being thousands of miles from home!

Two days later we moved on northwards to Vang Vieng, famous for it's beautiful scenery and even more so for it's "tubing". Tubing basically involves sitting in a big rubber ring (actually the inner tube of a tractor!) and floating down the river. There's a dozen or so bars on the 2 hour route downstream, and if you feel like stopping for a drink you signal to one of the barstaff and they will throw you a line and fish you out of the river! It was a really unusual but fun day. We did plan to do the same again today but we are all suffering a bit, with bad backs, bruised bottoms and Laura's "tube-burn"... oh, and there's the hangovers too, of course!

Tomorrow we are all hoping to move on to Luang Prabang where we will be celebrating New Year. We heard from many other travellers that Luang Prabang is a beautiful city, so I'm quite looking forward to it!

Northern Cambodia - Southern Laos

2008-12-25T04:45:00.007+02:00

Where to start? It's been so long since we updated the blog that I can't even remember everything that has happened since. But I'll give it a go...

From Phnom Penh we took a bus to Cambodia's second town, Battambang. It's a sleepy little town, nice enough but not a lot to do there. Our reason for spending a night there was that we wanted to catch a boat to Siem Reap the next morning. The boat ride was great; we sailed down a little river and waved to the locals who were fishing, washing, and swimming in the river. Just before Siem Reap we went through the "flooded forest" where big trees were growing in the middle of the lake. Weird but impressive.

Siem Reap was always going to be about the temples of Angkor Wat. The area of the temples is huge (apparently the largest religious site in the world), and there are temples that are overgrown with jungle, temples that have been restored, temples that are in ruins, temples on hills, and so on and so on... We spent three days in Siem Reap, which was just enough to see all the main temples but not to get completely templed out.

After Siem Reap we stopped in a couple of provincial towns in northern Cambodia before crossing the border to Laos. The border crossing was pretty relaxed; a couple of guys in a wooden hut asking for bribes. For a dollar we managed to buy all the necessary stamps on our passports and we were heading to Don Det in the 4000 Islands in southern Laos.

Don Det was great for a couple of days of relaxing. There are no temples or other must-visit cultural sites on the island, so we just stayed in hammocks most of the day, then went to watch the sunset over the Mekong river, had a couple of drinks and slept some more. Brilliant!

On our way from Don Det to Vientiane we stopped in Pakse and did a waterfall tour around the area. The tour took us to three different waterfalls; Tad Fan, Tad Lo, and Tad Something Else.

The next stop was in Tha Khaek and went to see a 7 km long cave that has a river running through it. We went to the pitch black cave with small motor boats and drove in darkness with just the guide's torch to help us navigate. Luckily our guides knew the place like their own pockets and we found the way easily, but when you are a few kilometers into a cave that is completely dark, in a small leaky boat you get a little nervous. It turned out to be an amazing experience anyway.

Now we are celebrating Christmas in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It's a nice place, and we have some friends that we met earlier in our travels to celebrate with, so I think it will be a nice Christmas. Different, but nice!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Phnom Penh

2008-12-08T12:35:00.005+02:00

As you've probably guessed, this blog is going to be a depressing one, so apologies in advance for that! Yes, entering Cambodia proved to be another culture shock, although not as bad as coming into Vietnam. Phnom Penh, for an Asian capital, is actually quite relaxed and calm, which was a nice surprise. The striking thing here is the poverty. We saw scenes like this before when we were in Indonesia a few years back, but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with it a second time. Small children are constantly begging for food and money, and at night we saw whole families camped out on just a blanket by the side of the road. It breaks your heart, and you know that even if you gave them the whole contents of your wallet it wouldn't change a damn thing.

The sights around the city are numerous, but those which most tourists (including ourselves)come to visit are those linked to the history of the Khmer Rouge regime. Our first stop was Tuol Sleng, originally a school but taken over by the Khmer Rouge in the 70s and turned into a prison where thousands of innocent people were interrogated and tortured before being sent off to be executed. These days the site is a museum dedicated to the victims; there's a chilling account of the atrocities committed, photos of the victims and accounts from relatives of the victims and from the few survivors, tiny cells where the victims were held, and more. It's not for the faint hearted (I was close to tears on several occasions) but as with the War Remnants Museum that we visited in Vietnam (which had similar exhibitions on the Vietnam War) I learned so much history - history we really should be more aware of since it happened in our lifetime - and got a better understanding of, and sympathy for the people here and the current situation in these countries.

Our second trip in Phnom Penh was to the Killing Fields at Cheung Ek, which was the final resting place of the above victims. Such peaceful green fields, it would have been hard to imagine what had happened here had it not been for an enormous memorial filled with the skulls of the victims, which brought back all the sad feelings of yesterday's trip.

On a happier note, it's only 16 days until Christmas Eve!! It doesn't seem Christmassy at all here in spite of the efforts of some guesthouses and restaurants who put up christmas trees with fake snow (not really sure why since the majority of people here aren't Christian). Mikko saw a Santa Claus walking down the street the other night. Then again, we also saw an elephant :-)

Tomorrow we move on to a place called Battambang. I don't really know much about the place but it's a convenient place to break up the journey before we take a boat trip onwards to Siem Reap where we'll do some SERIOUS temple trekking!

Southern Vietnam

2008-12-06T12:39:00.007+02:00

There was a time when I thought that coming to Vietnam was a bad idea from the start; the everlasting rain, the incredibly pushy hawkers, and the constant sound of mopeds was driving me mad, and I was ready to skip most of the country and move on. I'm glad we didn't though, because the last couple of weeks in Vietnam were absolutely lovely; we had glorious sunshine, the hawkers seemed to give up on us, and even the mopeds didn't seem too bad anymore.

Maybe it was just the weather that was getting us down before, or maybe we had just got a bit tired of moving about all the time for the last three months. Whatever it was, the curse was lifted by a tour of the countryside around Dalat in the "Highlands" of Vietnam, five days on the beach in Mui Ne, the buzzing chaos that is Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City), and finally a boat trip in the Mekong Delta.

In Dalat we took a tour out to the countryside and saw a coffee plantation, silk factory, rice wine making, and a lot of gardens and fields of flowers and veg. It was pretty nice change from hanging out in the bars and waiting for the rain to stop. And, of course, we sampled some of Dalat's famous(?) red wine.

Mui Ne was like a holiday from a holiday. We spent five days doing absolutely nothing. Swimming, eating, and some more Dalat wine filled the days quite nicely. The only touristy thing we did was a walk up the Fairy Stream to see some waterfalls. The waterfalls actually turned out to be a little trickle of muddy water but the walk along - and in - the river was nice.

After charging our batteries in Mui Ne we headed off to Saigon, which turned out to be another big surprise. I had imagined not to like the city at all after what I had heard from other travellers, but Saigon turned out to be quite charming in a slightly decadent way. If you can ignore the old fat western guys and their young local "girlfriends" the city is really nice and I wish we had a little more time to explore.

From Saigon we went to the Mekong Delta to take a boat trip around the delta and then on to Cambodia. The trip was fantastic! We saw some beautiful jungle scenery, waved to about a million little kids on the shores, screaming in joy at seeing strange western people. Of course there was also some crocodile feeding (what kind of a tour would not have it in the itinerary?), local music and singing (sorry, but that sounded like cats being strangled) and snake wine tasting. After all this fun we found ourselves at the most laid-back border crossing we have experienced so far. It was literally just a bloke by a fence, glancing at our passports as we walked past with beers in our hands. Nice!

We are now in Phnom Penh in Cambodia, but due to some vicious drinking games last night we haven't really done much sightseeing yet. Well, we have time, we're on holiday!

Northern Vietnam

2008-11-22T09:08:00.011+02:00

We've been in Vietnam around 10 days now and we're still not sure what to make of it. Things seem to be improving, but overall we've been a bit disappointed with the country so far. In comparison to China, the sights are similar, the food is tasteless, it's noisier, less safe and you have to haggle for everything you want to buy, right down to a bottle of water. I know you have to expect those kind of annoyances in South East Asia, but I was kind of expecting something amazing which would compensate for that, and so far we haven't found it. Don't let this put you off going to Vietnam though; Mikko and I are definitely a minority, every other person we meet on our travels is loving Vietnam!

After Sapa, we made our way to the capital, Hanoi. Aside from the hostel, with its rooftop terrace and free beer, I don't think we liked anything about Hanoi. The worst part for me was the traffic; it's noisy and it's incessant, you take your life into your hands every time you have to cross a road (which is a lot, because most of the pavements are blocked!. You're so busy clutching your valuables and hopping out of the way of motorbikes and ignoring all the hawkers yelling "BUY SOMETHING!" that you have no time to absorb the atmosphere around you. We stayed in Hanoi just long enough to recover from the bad nights' sleep we had on the way in, and to book a 3-day tour out of there, to Halong Bay.

Halong Bay was nice! (Yes, honestly, in spite of my whining, it's not all bad!) We were picked up early in the morning and transported to the bay where there were literally hundreds of boats and thousands of tourists waiting to board them. We got one of the nicer boats, I think. We set off into the bay where there were hundreds of the karst rocks (the same type we saw in Guilin and Yangshuo back in China) rising almost vertically upwards from the sea.

It was beautiful, and very relaxing to be on the boat and away from the madness of the city. In the afternoon we went swimming for a bit (the sea was clean and warm!) and then went kayaking for a couple of hours. You could paddle through some of the caves which was fun as there were some pretty strong currents in there. The night was spent partying and sleeping on the boat.

The next morning we split into two groups (kayakers and rock climbers) and I went off to do more kayaking while Mikko went to learn to climb.

In the afternoon, after I'd had enough, I went to watch the climbers. Mikko did a great job. He sailed up the easier climb with no problem. He didn't quite make it up the harder one, but then nobody else managed it either. Maybe they deliberately make it that way so you don't get over-confident and go off climbing by yourself ;-)

We spent that night on Cat Ba island but unfortunately the tour didn't give you any time to explore there. We had another delicious meal of both local food and pizza, and the following day went back to Hanoi. I still didn't like it!!

From Hanoi we caught a luxurious overnight train down to Hoi An, where we've spent the last two days. It's been pretty rainy again and the river through town has burst its banks. The restaurant I'd set my heart on is somewhere under the water.

Hoi An is a much smaller town, and thankfully much calmer. It's main claim to fame is its shops; shop after shop selling tailor-made suits and dresses and all at a snip of the price you'd pay back home. I was quite restrained and just bought one summer dress, for 15 US dollars, very nice!

Tonight we're moving on again. We finally get to go to the beach!!! Mikko is hoping to do a diving course there but that scares the hell out of me I will settle for a few easy days on the beach, sipping cocktails and reading a good book. I can hardly wait!

From China to Vietnam

2008-11-14T09:29:00.007+02:00

After all the fun we had in Yunnan province we felt a bit sad to leave China but we knew it was time to move on and head south. For one thing, the weather in Yunnan started to get a bit chilly and we thought that the beaches of Vietnam sounded quite tempting.

To get to Vietnam we took a 10-hour bus ride from Kunming to the border. At the border we had to leave the bus and cross the border on foot. This wasn't quite as easy as it sounds; our bus dropped us off at the bus station in the border town of Hekou in the darkness and nobody could speak enough English to tell us which way the border was. In the end I took my passport out and they seemed to get the idea. We walked in the direction we were sent and came to a barrier. Over the barrier we could see a road leading to Vietnam but short of jumping the barrier we could see no way in. Finally a friendly (no irony here) Chinese border guard came to our assistance and directed us to a small dark alley where the entrance to the chinese customs was found

The procedure on the Chinese side was pretty straightforward; the borderguard took our passports and asked why we didn't have Vietnamese visas, I opened the page of my passport where the visa was and she was happy, then she studied my passport for a while and asked me where I'm from, I told her Finland and she pretended to know that it's a country. Then we were off to get our passports stamped and stared at at another desk and motioned to go to Vietnam. As we had no idea which exit to take we asked another border guard where Vietnam is, she looked at us a bit funny and said 'you go over the bridge'.

We managed our way across the bridge and reached Lao Cai, the Vietnamese side of the border. There three different people stared and stamped our passports without a word, then pointed at a piece of paper we were supposed to fill in with no pens, reluctantly gave us one pen to share and finally stamped the piece of paper and made a point of not welcoming us to Vietnam

As we left the building there were a number of shifty looking 'taxi drivers' offering to take us to places we didn't know. After a bit of bartering we took one of them up on his offer to drive us to Sapa, a little town in the mountains about an hour's drive away from Lao Cai. We probably paid far more then was the going rate for this journey but we got to Sapa just in time for dinner and booked ourselves into a fairly nice hotel

Sapa is quite an interesting place after China. The town has a very European style of architecture and they sell lovely hard crusted rolls (both thanks to the French colonialists, I guess). After the tranquility of the mountain towns of China, Sapa is a bit hectic, everyone and their grandmother is trying to sell you stuff. In fact, they are selling such random stuff that their most common sales pitch is 'you, buy something'.

Sapa is a beautiful place though, and if you can ignore the hawkers and the millions of mopeds it is a nice place to spend a couple of days. We have done a couple of half-day walks in the area and the scenery is pretty wonderful. Last night we also splashed out and spent 30 euros on a meal and a bottle of red wine (the first time we had any wine since Finland!), which was a nice change from local food and weak lager

Tonight we are going to catch our first Vietnamese night train to Hanoi. We are travelling in relative luxury compared to Chinese trains since we are in a compartment of only four people. What that is like in reality remains to be seen...

Around Yunnan province

2008-11-07T11:47:00.012+02:00

Hi again! Quite a lot has happened since we last wrote. Our first stop in Yunnan province was Kunming. It's not a particularly interesting city and to be honest we weren't really inspired to explore it much since because of the constant torrential rain, but anyway we needed to go to Kunming to apply for our visas for Vietnam, and because Kunming is the main transport hub for the rest of the province. From there we moved on to a small town called Dali but since the weather showed no sign of improving there we pushed on to the northwest since we knew we'd have to come back the same way later. So, we went to Shangri-La. It's a really beautiful Tibetan village surrounded by the snowcapped mountains of the Himalayas and close to the Tibetan border.

If you're not going to Tibet (and we're not) then this is apparently the next best thing. It's a beautiful place and the people were really friendly. The only small problem was that night times were freezing; we were wearing gloves and sleeping with electric blankets which was a bit of a shock to the system after the 30 degrees heat of Yangshuo just the previous week! After two days in Shangri-La we moved on to Tiger Leaping Gorge which was one of the things on our "must do" list for China. We weren't dissappointed!

Tiger Leaping Gorge is a 2-day trek in the mountains. We walked with 2 others; Nancy from Canada, who we've been travelling with since Kunming, and Neil from Australia, who we met in a bar in Shangri-La. It's hard to describe how beautiful this place is. Neither words nor photos do it justice. It's simply stunning; every way you turn there is a view, be it a waterfall, a snowcapped mountain or a valley of pine trees.

And to top it off, after a week of cold and rain we were blessed with glorious sunshine once again. The trek was the best part of the trip so far and possibly the most amazing scenery I've ever seen. At the end of the trek nobody was in any hurry to leave the gorge so we stayed a night at a hostel at the end of the route, rested our aching legs and treated ourselves to a few beers!

The next day we moved on to the town of Lijiang. It's a nice town but it's somehow spoilt by the hordes of tourists passing through (yes, I realise we are tourists ourselves, but still...). Also, after the beauty of Tiger Leaping Gorge, I think any place was going to be a disappointment. We went to see an orchestra playing local Naxi music. Unfortunately that was disappointing too; the musicians' beards were more impressive than their music!

After that, we went back to Dali which is where we are now. There's not a great deal to do here but it has a pretty old town and the hostel we are staying at is a wonderful place to just sit back and chill for a while; I think we were really ready for that! And besides, there was heavy flooding in Vietnam last week so it's probably best to wait for them to clear up a bit before we move on.

November 6th was Mikko's birthday, before we left to go hiking for the day I asked Dave and Song from the hostel if they could arrange a birthday cake in the evening. They came back with the most beautiful cake I've ever seen with all kinds of exotic fruits on top.

Mikko was surprised and happy, and after a while very full of cake. We also had the best company that night; the hostel staff, Neil, Nancy and also Max, a guy we met earlier on our tour in Mongolia who suddenly showed up at the hostel, so it was nice catching up with him again and exchanging travelling tales.
Mikko had plenty of Tsingtao's bought for him throughout the evening and a great night was had by all. Needless to say, we didn't do much the following day!

Top 10 - Weird China

2008-10-29T08:59:00.009+02:00

China has been quite an experience. Here are our Top 10 oddities so far:

#10 - Recycling. There are recycling bins everywhere, but the system still needs a little developing.

#9 - Audiences. What ever happens, where ever it happens, and when ever it happens, there's always an audience.

#8 - The police. It takes a real tough cop to look hard in one these golf carts.

#7 - Beer Pong. The true king of games. Throw a pingpong ball into your opponents beer glass and make them drink it (just the beer, not the ball).

#6 - Outdoor haircuts. Cheap and cheerful, but no mirrors anywhere in sight.

#5 - Trains. Travel in Chinese trains can be a real experience. Especially in night trains, if you get the top bunk.

#4 - T-shirts. You can have your favourite psycopath (Hitler, Bin Laden, Ballack, etc.) printed on your t-shirt.

#3 - Condom dress. If t-shirts aren't your thing, there's always the dress made entirely of condoms.

#2 - Advertising. Recognise the bearded fellow in this restaurant's banner?

#1 - Toilets. A clear winner. A trip to the toilet in China is never a boring one. The picture below is the ladies' in Dali, Yunnan.

Yangshuo

2008-10-23T11:07:00.022+03:00

After visiting the big cities of Xi'an and Guilin we were looking forward to moving on to Yangshuo, a small town (at least by Chinese scale) in southern China.

I was expecting a sleepy little village, but as it turned out about a million other tourists had had the same idea before us and we found ourselves in a Chinese equivalent of Torremolinos; the main street had shops selling everything from fake watches to t-shirts with "I'm Mental" printed on them. And of course there were bars around every corner offering English breakfast.

But even if the town was not very authentically Chinese, at least it was really beautiful; there is a river running through the town and all around are karst peaks rising almost vertically from the ground. The weather was also lovely and warm, so we thought this was a good place to chill out for a few days, and not do any temples or museums.

In Yangshuo we also bumped into Janne and Hilde from Norway, who we had met earlier in Beijing. We all went on a kayak tour on the Li River, which turned out to be a fantastic day. We paddled downstream for about 3 hours and stopped for lunch in a little village on the way.

In the village I got talking to a local woman who wanted to practice her English. She had a little handwritten book of phrases that visitors had taught her. My favourite phrase in the book was "Do you need opium and hookers?" I wondered what she thought that meant, but I didn't have the courage to ask - after all, there's a limit to how much opium and hookers you can get into a kayak.

After kayaking we happened to notice a sign "English teachers wanted" in Yangshuo. We thought that this might be a fun thing to do for a few weeks and went in and asked about the job possibilities. They seemed pretty interested in our services and we got ourselves an interview for the next day; they wanted us to teach a class and see how that went. So, there we were the next morning, standing in front of a class of Chinese students doing our best to get them focused on learning English and not on the fact that we are not married (this seemed unthinkable to them). We ended up teaching two classes, and we had a lot of fun doing it. The students were really nice and curious about us and where we came from. In the end we didn't stay on as teachers because the school was only able to offer us part-time positions, but we had a great time nevertheless.

The next day we went back to being tourists again. We rented bicycles and drove to another river nearby. There we got our bikes on a bamboo raft and sailed down the stream for a couple of hours. After the rafting we picked up our bikes and headed off to Moon Hill and the Water Cave.

Moon Hill is a semicircular hill that you can climb in about an hour. The day was very hot so the climb seemed pretty long but once we got on top of the moon the view was worth the sweat and tears.

The Water Cave was also a great experience. You take a boat to enter the cave through a small hole in a hill, but once you are inside you can get off the boat and walk around. The place was absolutely huge, I've never seen a cave that size, there were enormous stalagtites and stalagmites everywhere and little streams and pools here and there. We even got to go swimming in one of the pools, which was nicely refreshing after climbing the Moon Hill.

There would have been even more to do in Yangshuo but we felt that it was time to move on and head to the west. We are now back in Guilin, trying to find the best way to travel to Kunming, Lijiang and Dali in Yunnan province of China. But that's another story...

Going South

2008-10-19T12:19:00.013+03:00

From Pingyao we moved on to Xi'an, it's another big city famed for it's 'army' of terracotta warriors, built some 2000 years ago, apparently to guard the tomb of a dead emperor. So we went to check that out, it was a very impressive sight. Like with the Great Wall in Beijing, I'm fascinated by the scale on which the Chinese build things and the great effort involved, and I often find myself asking what was the point, and was it ever really worth the huge effort?! But they are really spectacular sights, so I'm not complaining, and we're definitely enjoying!!

Besides the warriors, Xi'an has some nice old city walls that you can hike or bike around, and a picturesque muslim quarter; it was nice to browse the shops and eateries there. There are also plenty of temples but we skipped most of them, having had a bit of an overdose of temples in the past week. Oh, we also got another massage! No scars or bruises this time; our faith in Chinese medicine has been restored :-)

Then on from Xi'an we faced a 27 hour train journey to Guilin. Due to the long time we would be spending in the train, we tried to get soft sleeper tickets (equivalent of 1st class) but they had sold out, so we went for the next best thing and they had sold out too. So, we had to settle for a simple seat reservation. At 220 yuan (about 20 euros) for a 27 hour ride we figured we had a bargain and we could put up with anything that 3rd class travel had to throw at us. Well, it was certainly an experience, I wouldn't necessarily want to repeat it but it was far more interesting and entertaining than travelling in 1st or 2nd class. The train was jam-packed full of people, we were the only tall white ones so of course we caused quite a stir! Some people had reserved seats (like us), but some didn't, so they either squeezed themselves onto the side of someone else's seat, or they slept on the filthy floor, or in one case, in the sink! (I wish I'd taken a picture, but it was 3a.m. and I wasn't exactly thinking straight...)

I've developed a huge admiration for the way the Chinese behave; everyone in the train seemed more than willing to sqeeze themselves into the tiniest spaces so that a complete stranger could have a bit of their seat. I didn't give up mine but I had one sleeping baby after another dumped on my lap so that they could get a bit of rest! Another thing I really admire is that they are always happy and smiling, and never seem to complain about anything. At one point I was getting really annoyed by one girl sitting opposite to me who never stopped talking and laughing, it was 6 a.m. and the whole carriage could hear her. But rather then coming and telling her to shut up, the other passengers were coming over to our seats to listen to her stories, we had a huge crowd and everyone (well, everyone except the two grumpy white tourists!) joined in the conversation. I really admire their positivity, and I made a mental note to myself to try and be more tolerant of people in the future... let's see how long that lasts!

Throughout the day, as we travelled further south, the scenery outside became more hilly and interesting, and kept us entertained. Still, when we pulled into Guilin I think we were more than happy to get out and stretch our legs, get some fresh air and have a good wash! :-)

The next day we explored Guilin. It's really nice and warm here (about 26 degrees) and it's much less hectic and more scenic than the previous cities. We climbed one of the karst peaks in the city centre for some nice views of the city, had a walk along the Li River and visited the Reed Flute Cave, Guilin's main attraction. It's the biggest cave I've ever seen, with some really impressive stalactite and stalagmite formations all lit up with eerie fluorescent lights.

Then it was time to leave Guilin and move on to Yangshuo. It's an hour and a half bus ride away, and it's supposed to be even more beautiful. We'll keep you posted!

By the way, we added some more pictures in the Mongolia Gobi desert blog. Thanks to Scott Appleby for taking and sending us the pics. It's probably a blessing that we had no camera in Mongolia because these photos are better than anything we could have taken!

Also, I'm a few days late, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Grandma, Barbara Porter, who's an avid reader of our travel diary. She's just turned 85 years old. Congratulations, Grandma! xxx

From Beijing to Pingyao

2008-10-11T12:25:00.008+03:00

All good things must come to an end, it was time for us to leave Beijing. The fact that our next stop was Datong, one of China's ugliest and most polluted cities, didn't make us too excited about leaving. But we were not going to stay in Datong longer than was absolutely necessary.

We took a night train from Beijing to Datong, which was quite an experience. We got "hard sleeper" tickets, which meant three storey bunk-beds in an open carriage (as opposed to "soft sleepers" where you get a cabin with four sharing. Luckily we had the bottom bunks, and didn't have to climb to the hat-shelf-like top bunks. The fact that the Chinese smoke everywhere (and constantly) made breathing a bit hard, but otherwise we managed a decent night's sleep.

We arrived in Datong at dawn, and were immediately caught by the tour organisers. This fit nicely into our plan because we wanted to visit the Hanging Monastery and the Yungang Caves, and then take the night train to Pingyao, without staying in Datong for the night.

After a booking our tour and train tickets (and a nice breakfast in a nearby hotel) we were on our way to the Hanging Monastery. Well, to be honest the monastery doesn't really hang. It is actually propped up on a hillside with wooden poles. But the effect is pretty impressive, though. You can very easily imagine the whole thing collapsing at any minute.

As monasteries go (and by now we've seen a fair few already) this was a good one. It does seem that you find monasteries in the strangest places around here: in the middle of a desert, behind a rock that doesn't quite look like a turtle, or halfway up a steep hill. Having said that, I don't remember seeing any monasteries back home, maybe those ones are even better hidden?

The next stop was the Yungang Caves. These were the first caves we have seen so far, and it was a strong start. There are loads of caves in different shapes and sizes, some with Buddhas still inside, others looted.

After the caves we had to face Datong. As expected, it was not a highpoint of our trip. To be fair we only explored a couple of blocks of the city since Julie's digestive system had been somewhat boosted by spicy Chinese food, and we had to remain within a sprinting distance from the only decent toilets in the city.

After a long day we finally boarded on our train to Pingyao. This time we were in a hard sleeper with a middle and a top bunk, but by now this wasn't too bad; we were tired and beyond caring.

We are now in Pingyao, a lovely little town with an ancient city wall around it. There isn't so much to do, but just walking along the narrow streets and looking at the restaurants and shops is good fun.

We also seem to be heading deeper into the country and as there are less and less foreigners around we seem to have become tourist attractions ourselves. It is now impossible to go anywhere without the Chinese tourist groups shouting "Hello!" at you and snapping pictures. It's all good fun, though!

Tonight we are heading to Xi'an on another night train. This time we are in a hard sleeper carriage with two top bunk tickets. Oh well...

Photos from Beijing

2008-10-07T12:23:00.005+03:00

I'm not quite sure what to write about Beijing, so I'll share some photos with you instead.

Oh, and I added some of Andy's photos from Mongolia in the post "Around Mongolia".

We made it to Beijing!

2008-10-02T15:37:00.013+03:00

Yes, we made it! It's a fantastic place, too. Beijing seems to have everything: it's clean, people are friendly, it's modern and things work, it seems really safe, and yet it's still by far the cheapest place we've been to so far. The weather is also fantastic here at the moment (around 25 degrees) which is really nice after the freezing nights camping in Mongolia. And the food is a hundred times better, too!

We arrived here two days before China's National Day (1st October) when the whole nation takes a week of holiday. Plenty of people told us it's a crazy time to be travelling in China but we figured that if we had managed to book transport into China and accommodation in Beijing then it couldn't be too bad. It turns out (of course!) that they were right and we were wrong; it is absolute chaos around any tourist attraction (we tried to get to Tiananmen Square to see if there was anything happening on the 1st, but couldn't get near enough to tell!). But it's so nice here that we really don't mind taking it easy for a week and waiting for the tourist madness to die down a bit.

On our first day we went shopping and managed to find ourselves a new camera at quite a bargain price. After selling us the new one they told us they could mend the old one for around 50 euros, and true to their word, they did. So now we have two cameras! But the new one seems much better than the old one, so no harm done.

Yesterday, after our failed attempt to get to Tiananmen Square we spent some time in a nearby park (Beihai Park) and then went for a walk around the hutongs (narrow alleyways around the older traditional residential areas). There we found a massage place, and decided to go for it as we were quite tired from all the walking. We both took a half an hour back massage, and although it hurt like hell, I think that part of the experience was quite beneficial. But, stupid tourists that we are, we don't know when to stop. So when they offered us some traditional Chinese medicine, we thought "why not?" Famous last words...! Our backs were scraped with something which felt like a fine toothed comb until we were almost bleeding, and then rubbed with some kind of oitment. I stopped at this point but Mikko went one step further. They offered him the "cupping" treatment, which is apparently supposed to straighten your spine. At this point I'd like to say a special thank-you to my Mum and Dad for blessing me with a straight spine! So, they burn something inside glass cups so that it creates a vacuum and the cups stick to your skin and suck your skin inside the cups. Im still not sure how it's supposed to straighten the spine though, and the masseur "doctor" didn't have the English skills to explain. It wasn't very pretty to watch, but according to Mikko, it was not as painful as the scraping thing we both suffered. One day (and one sleepless night) later, we are still bruised, and feeling quite foolish! :-)

Today, we've had a more lazy day. We went to an impressive Lama temple and did some more walking around, trying to avoid any of the major tourist hotspots, and any centres of Chinese medicine, and stopping off regularly to refresh ourselves with a local Tsingtao beer. We're psyching ourselves up to getting up early tomorrow to check out the Summer palace. But another day of lazyness would suit me fine too!

Desert life

2008-09-27T09:28:00.014+03:00

I know that it might not be everyone's idea of fun to go on a desert tour. But we hadn't quite found our inner nomads in Terelj, and thought that we should give it another go. So, we booked a tour that went to the Gobi desert for 7 nights and 8 days. All the nights would be spent in traditional gers (to me they look like big tents, but apparently there is a difference) with nomad families. Our tour group consisted of us two, Scott and Katie from the US, Claudio from Italy, and our driver Ekme.

Day 1

The first thing that we had to face was the long drive from Ulan Bator to the Gobi. The Roads in UB are bad enough, but the roads in the desert are absolutely awful. If you think of a dirt track that has been bombed every day for a decade you start to get the picture. Luckily our van was a sturdy Russian half-jeep, so at least it stayed in one piece.

The scenery was quite wonderful as soon as we left the city. Big mountains on both sides and pretty much nothing apart from infertile land in between. We could see some sheep, cows and horses. And above them hawks and eagles.

We spent the first night with a family who had one ger for themselves and another for guests. I thought that I should go and have a look what our hosts were doing in their place, and happened to walk right into a sight that you don't often see in a city: in one corner there was a tv with an American soap on (with Mongolian voice overs). In the middle of the floor the mother of the family was cooking our dinner, and in another corner the father and son were skinning and gutting a sheep.

Day 2

When we woke up the ger was pretty cold, and I had a sore throat. I decided to gargle with the Ghenggis Khan vodka that we had left over from Terelj and felt instantly better.

When we started to drive you could see that the scenery was already different from the first day. Bits of grass sticking out from the ground were becoming fewer and sand was taking over. We were now deeper in the desert and the sheep and cows were also starting to be replaced by camels.

Just before lunch we stopped at a little Buddhist stupa (at least that's what I think it was, Ekme just told us to walk around it three times). We walked around it to guarantee a successful trip, and I sprinkled a bit of vodka on some of the other offerings to ensure my throat was getting better.

In the evening we found our ger camp next to a small lake (I know, I didn't realise they had lakes in deserts either!). After a hike around the lake we went socialising with our hosts who entertained themselves by offering Claudio some snuff tobacco and watching him sneeze like hell afterwards.

Day 3

There is nothing quite like starting your day with a gentle camel ride. We took the camels (or rather, the camels took us, we had no control over them) for an hours walk, which turned out to be a lot more comfortable than anticipated. My throat was also feeling a lot better, so the vodka and offerings seemed to be doing their job.

After the camel ride we started driving towards a mountain range in the horizon. After a drive to the top of the mountains we got a glimpse of our next destination: the sand dunes.

Our camp was about 1 hour walk from the dune that stretched about 100 km in length and 200 meters in hight. After lunch we went to the dune to have a little look. It seemed that the highest point was a little further away and since we were staying here for two nights we thought that we would go and check it out tomorrow.

Day 4

We set off to the highest point of the dune in the morning. It turned out that it was about 10 km to the base of the dune, and then 200 meters climb up. The walk to the dune was easy but the climb was hard because the dune was quite steep, and the wind was blowing sand into our ears, eyes and mouths. We finally managed to get to the top and the view was totally worth the climb: on one side you could see the dune continuing until the mountains, and on the other side the desert stretched until the horizon.

Claudio thought that this walk was completely pointless because it was the same sand as yesterday, just a lot harder climb. He was cursing in Italian (I'm sure "mi chiano" and "madonna" were mentioned) most of the way but still came along. I think he actually enjoyed it.

After we returned from this walk we were pretty knackered and spent the rest of the day relaxing in the ger.

Day 5

After yesterdays walk on the dune we were all feeling very dirty and had sand all over us. That is why we were really looking forward to tonight with the first opportunity to shower since leaving UB.

Before showers we were taken to "Ice valley", which is indeed a valley with ice in it (for most of the year - but not just now). The place was lovely, a small valley in between huge mountains, a few mountain goats on the hillside, and horses eating grass in the valley. Claudio was a bit surprised though, "No ice, just a valley".

After Ice valley we drove into a small desert town, and finally got our showers. It was a glorious feeling, the showers were clean and there was hot water. After showers we went to shop and treated ourselves to a couple of beers. In the camp we had a good dinner, a beer, and a game of cards, and then went to sleep feeling full, clean and warm!

Day 6

In the morning we were slightly surprised to find a small Mongolian lady in our van. There also seemed to be some of her bags in the back of the van and the driver didn't seem surprised so we just guessed that we were giving her a lift somewhere. Strange things happen around here, and when you can only get a few words of English out of your driver it is often better not ask.

The drive was not particularly inspiring today (the token camels and endless desert), and we arrived to our camp quite early. After that the driver and the Mongolian lady disappeared and we decided to go for another walk.

After a long walk we arrived back to the camp for dinner. The food in the Gobi seems to consist entirely of rice, potato and mutton (sometimes with a bit of pasta, if you're lucky). The same was on offer tonight. For those who are curious about the Gobi breakfasts, it's also always the same: little bits of dough, deep fried in sheep fat (or mutton sticks, as we called them) and a flask of hot water that smells of sheep. Yum, yum!

Day 7

The mysterious Mongolian lady was still with us in the morning. We are now suspecting that she is getting a ride to UB.

Our first stop was a buddhist monastery, situated truly in the middle of nowhere. You just have to admire these people for their perseverance, to be a monk is one thing, but when the monastery is in the middle of a desert that is something else. Not that the nomads living here have it easy either. They have pretty much all their possessions in their gers, and the only means of transport is horses (and motorcycles in some cases). A simple trip to the nearest shop might mean an 8 hour drive. And that's just in case you have money to buy something, there is not exactly oodles of money to be made in herding sheep.

Our last night in the desert was spent in some luxury because our driver managed to find some firewood and lit a fire in the oven of our ger.

Day 8

The last day of the tour was a long drive back to UB. We only had one flat tire today (total of 4 on the tour), so it didn't take too long.

The time spent in the Gobi was something quite special, and after 8 days of simple life the city seemed even more chaotic than before. But there was a promise of running hot water, clean clothes, and fresh food.

I guess it's safe to say that we are not cut out to be nomads, we were missing our showers and fresh vegetables too much. But we really enjoyed our experience. It made a great change from city life, and there's just nothing like a clear starry sky in the desert night.

Around Mongolia

2008-09-26T11:47:00.007+03:00

Hello again! Sorry it's been a while since the last post but we've been busy "on tour" in Mongolia with very limited access to the internet!

So, I'll start where Mikko left off. We took the train from Irkutsk to Ulan Bator and to our surprise found ourselves sharing a cabin with Andy and Rob; two English guys who, we are starting to suspect, have been stalking us since the beginning of our travels! We met them first in our hostel in Moscow, then later on Olkhon Island, and then on the train to Mongolia. We got some beers in (as you do!) and had a good night chatting about our travels so far.

This time we spent just 2 nights in the train, but annoyingly it passed through most of the nice places (it follows the edge of lake Baikal for quite a distance) during the night, and for most of the daylight hours the train was stationary at a very depressing Russian border town called Naushki. After what seemed like an eternity (especially when you're not allowed to leave the train and the toilets are locked!) the border guards finally came onto the train and checked that our passports/ visas were all in order. We were slightly disappointed that after all the hassle trying to register our visas in Moscow, they didn't even check whether we had bothered to register them at all!

On arrival in Ulan Bator we were met by a mob of people offering accommodation/ taxis/ tours, etc. Fortunately, we'd prebooked a hostel so we could just ignore the masses and made our way to a man holding up a card with our name on. Good thinking! :-)

Andy and Rob were also staying at our hostel, and we figured that since we would probably end up in the same place anyway then it made sense for us to book a tour together! So, we arranged a 2 night trip out to Terelj National Park, leaving the following morning. We had the rest of the day free so we went for a walk around the city. Ulan Bator is a bit of a crazy place. Its polluted, noisy, the traffic is hell, the buildings are ugly (still Soviet-style) and there are pickpockets everywhere. But despite all that, there is something very nice about it... a nice atmosphere somehow, but I can't quite figure out why!

We took a walk around a buddhist monastery in the city centre which was a very beautiful and relaxing place, then we walked down the main street, Peace Avenue, in the hope of finding a new camera. We didn't find one (at least, nothing that didn't look like it had fallen off the back off a lorry!) but we did find a vegetarian restaurant, much to my delight! In the evening we went to a concert, which had a strange combination of the tradition Mongolian art of throat singing (very weird... I can't even begin to describe what it sounds like), other tradition music performances and dances and some gymnastics. It was a fun evening, very different to any other.

So, the following morning we were packed into a minibus bound for Terelj, a National Park about 100km from the city. Outside of the city, most of the Mongolian people lead a nomadic lifestyle, following their animals around the countryside and staying in little round tent made of felt, called gers. We were told that we would be staying with a nomad family and were all looking forward to the experience. But on arrival, I think we were all a bit disappointed. One man came and showed us to our ger, informed us "lunch at 2pm" (it was 10am) and then disappeared. We had no idea where we were, no map and no idea what we could do in the area. Our camp was facing a mountain so we decided to climb. It was a beautiful view over the camp and the surrounding countryside, and there were wild horses everywhere. We went back to the camp for lunch, which consisted of rice, mutton and potato, pretty much what we expected!

After lunch some other tourists told us about Turtle Rock (a rock which looks- you've guessed it!- a little bit like a turtle). So with no other options, we set off on another walk to the rock, which turned out to be quite a hike since we didnt really know where we were going, just wandering aimlessly looking for anything resembling a turtle. In the end, we found the turtle, which is really nothing special. But next to him was a small ger where some people were charging tourists a small fee to have there photos taken dressed as Mongolian emperors/ emperesses. We all felt a little bit foolish in the beginning but before long Rob had started cross-dressing, and in the end I think the locals got more of a kick out of it than us tourists did!

When we returned to the camp, they had organised horseriding, and this was by far the best part of the whole trip. Our "guide", the son of our host family, was about 12 years old and spoke very limited English. I think we were all pretty nervous. Sure enough, within 2 hours he had everyone's horses galloping down the mounainside, completely out of control, to his screams of "GENGHIS KHAAAAAN!!".

The following day we walked to a remote monastery up int the mountains. There was not so much to see there, but still it was a nice walk. We had to walk past the turtle again to get there. It doesn't matter how many times you see it, it still doesn't look like a turtle.

The next day we returned to Ulan Bator, and booked another longer tour, into the Gobi desert. I'll leave that to Mikko to report.

We still don't have a camera (should get ourselves a new one in Beijing), so the pics of Terelj are by Andy.

We are reading all your comments, and I'm happy to hear you're enjoying our blog! It's always really nice to hear from you too. I'm having a wonderful time travelling but believe me I miss you all, so thanks for your comments. Until the next time...

Olkhon Island

2008-09-12T10:48:00.003+03:00

Olkhon Island is situated just a six-hour minibus ride from Irkutsk in Lake Baikal, but it feels like a different world altogether.

As we left Irkutsk on a bumpy road the scenery started to get more and more rural, with little villages here and there. After a short ferry crossing onto the Island the road pretty much disappeared and the last few kilometers were more of a dirt track. We were really out in the back of Siberia now!

The Island itself is absolutely beautiful. There are some impressive hills covered in forests, grassy plains, and even some sandy beaches. Where ever you walk you can see cows wandering about (this is true of the villages as well as the fields, I nearly fell over a cow when I opened our door one morning) and sometimes a pack of dogs chasing them.

This was the first time we both really felt like we were traveling. Before here we had only seen cities and trains, but now we were really experiencing something new. The relaxed atmosphere was a welcome break from city-life. The traditional folk song concert (two ladies and an accordion in a cafe) organised by our hostel and a couple of rounds of local fire water also helped us to get into the truly shamanic frame of mind!

The only problem was that our camera broke (luckily only on the last day of our stay on the island) so we will have to find a new one either in Irkutsk or in Ulan Bator where we will be stopping next. But that's still a couple of nights train ride away...

3 days on a train!

2008-09-08T18:29:00.004+03:00

So, after all the hassles in the last hours in Moscow, we boarded the "Baikal" Trans-Siberian train to Irkutsk. It's a 3 day, 4 night journey covering 5185 kilometers and crossing 5 time zones!

We were quite amazed how quickly the time passed by. I guess after 5 days of pretty heavy sightseeing and vodka-drinking we were quite ready for a few peaceful days of not-doing-very-much. We sat and watched the scenery go by, we chatted to other passengers, we read books and planned the journey ahead, and of course, slept a lot!

We shared our cabin with a very quiet but polite Russian man. Also in our carriage was an English bloke (in the next cabin down), a really cute little girl who kept coming by to chat with us (...I'm not really sure whether she was old enough to understand that we didn't understand a single word she said!). Oh, and a very tanned, very muscular body-builder type who like to wander around with nothing on except a very tiny pair of shorts :-)

Sometimes we wandered down to the restaurant car but the food wasn't really anything to write home about. There was much better food to be had from the old babushkas selling their homemade food from the platforms whenever the train stopped. I was particularly impressed with the cabbage and potato piroshki, which is hard to describe, but similar to a savoury doughnut. Other than that, we ate a lot of dried pot noodles that we bought in the supermarket beforehand. I can say without any doubt that I don't ever want to eat those again!

So now we are in Irkutsk. We haven't really had time to explore the place yet. But tomorrow morning we are taking the bus to Olkhon Island, on lake Baikal. It looks really beautiful there. We're hoping to do a bit of trekking, if only the weather improves a bit!

Finally, I am getting used to the idea that we are travelling. It never really sunk in until now. In Saint Petersburg and even in Moscow it just felt as if we were on a weekend break. But the further away from home we get, the more I'm starting to realise the enormity of the trip we've embarked on. And it's a great feeling!!

In the next blog I will try to add some pics of Mikko. In the last week he's grown an amazing technicolour beard!!

Some pics from Moscow

2008-09-08T18:11:00.003+03:00

St. Basil's Cathedral at night

Inside the Kremlin walls

Shopping, Moscow style!

In front of the Red Square

Inside the Kremlin

Introduction to Russian bureaucracu

2008-09-04T19:47:00.004+03:00

Moscow was a bit of a surprise. Completely different from St. Petersburg. Here you have a lot more tourists (although no tourist information, street side maps, or other things a tourist might need), and you can really see the wealth of the moneyed Russians.

One thing that doesn't change is the bureaucracy. It could all be so simple. You could just buy your tickets, book your hotel and enjoy your holiday. Well, not in Russia! Not only do you have to get a visa to enter the country but you also need to register your visa in every city where you stay for 3 days or more, and at least once during your stay in Russia.

We didn't do our visa registration in St. Petersburg because our stay fell on a weekend so we needed to do it in Moscow. This became a bit more of a hassle than I imagined. When we arrived to our hostel we were told that they sort it out and we go and pick up the paper the next day. Then they changed it to the day after that. When we finally got the go ahead we found ourselves trying to navigate our way through this huge city during rush hour. After standing in a queue outside a metro station for a quarter of an hour, we decided to walk instead. The only problems were that it had suddenly got really hot, and that we didn't have a map.

Somehow we managed the trek through the unknown and found the right street. The first big question mark appeared when we entered the address given to us by our hostel owner. The place had no sign outside (this seems to be the standard here), and when we entered there were just a bunch of teenagers behind desks in a room. Not exactly the bureaucratic scene I had invisioned. To make things worse these kids did not speak english and seemed to come equipped with a foul attitude.

After a long and utterly unfruitful conversation in English (by us) and Russian (by them) we were no closer to the solution. They seemed to think that we were wasting their time, and we tried to convince them that they should have our papers ready. We finally managed to get them to call our hostel so we would all have some kind of an idea of why we were there. Two minutes after they made the call we were already on the same wave length, but still couldn't agree on the price. Another phone call followed, and a minute later we had paid the sum previously agreed and had the papers in our hands. No problem!

This is a strange country. You can get so utterly frustrated with it, but you can't help liking it at the same time. Or maybe that's just me losing my mind...

Anyway, tonight we will catch the Trans-siberian train to Irkusk, where we will arrive in the morning of 8th September. This gives us a good few days to contemplate what we have encountered so far. After all, what else is there to do in the train? Unless, of course, they happen to have some vodka on board...

From Rags to Riches

2008-09-02T12:20:00.010+03:00

The first impression from a train window was not particularly encouraging when we crossed the border to Russia: in the middle of the forest I saw a shabby little blue house with tree Ladas in different stages of decomposition on the yard. Great! But that was the countryside, we were off to the metropolis.

Among the first things that you notice in St. Petersburg are traffic, cyrillic alphabet, and women's heels that remind you of radio masts.

The alphabet is actually not that hard to grasp, and luckily we had a quick look at the differences on our way. Which was good, because otherwise the metro, street names and the rest are just plain incomprehensible. Russians don't seem to be too bothered about tourists in general, and very few places use western alphabet, not to mention any language other than Russian. But that's all part of the fun!

The traffic is something quite different from what we're used to back home. There are all kinds of cars on the streets from stretched Hummer limousines to rusty old Volgas. The one thing common to all cars is speed. Everyone drives like mad, and pedestrians who expect a car to stop at a zebra crossing are soon going to be ex-pedestrians.

We also managed to experience Banya (Russian sauna), which wasn't too different from a Finnish smoke sauna. The place itself was quite interesting, from the outside the only indication that this place was a sauna was a little piece of paper stuck on the door. Inside they had a pool room (and by this I mean billiards), a couple of massage beds, and the banya area with saunas and pools (with water).

We have also been introduced to Russian vodka. I guess you can't really avoid it. There doesn't seem to be any strict etiquette to drinking vodka, as long as there is plenty of it.

Last night we cought a train from St. Petersburg to Moscow. We shared a compartment with a Russian guy who was on his way to an exhibition of precious stones in Moscow. He gave us tickets for the exhibition, so I guess we'll have to go and take a look...

One thing that we still have to take care of is visa registration. This is some incomprehensible remain of Soviet days that only exists to finance the bureaucracy. How it works in theory is that you have to register your visa every time you stay in a town for three working days or more. How it works in practise may be a different thing altogether. We'll see...

St. Petersburg

2008-09-01T10:37:00.006+03:00

Hello and greetings from our first destination, St. Petersburg!
After a super early start from Tampere on Friday morning we arrived here around 2pm and successfully managed to navigate the St Petersburg metro and find our way safely to the hostel. We kept ourselves entertained on the train by trying to master the cyrillic alphabet which has proved to be really useful!

Since then we have done A LOT of walking around but managed to cover all the main sights: Nevsky Prospekt, Peter and Paul's Fortress, the Hermitage, the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, a.k.a. Saviour on the Spilt Blood, St. Isaac's cathedral, Alexandrovskiy gardens...
The Hermitage was a wonderful experience. I wasn't so sure if it would be worth it since neither of us are huge art fans, but just being inside the Winter palace and looking at the interiors was fantastic, and we had fun deciding what we would do with the rooms "if we were tsars" :-)
Our feet are aching with all the walking, and I'm really amazed at how well the Russian ladies cope, since their heels are at least 3 inches higher than mine!

Today we have arranged to go to a Russian banya (Russian equivalent of sauna) with some other guests in our hostel. I'm looking forward to finding out if it's any different to the Finnish sauna. And then tonight we are heading off to Moscow on the night train.

Three days to go

2008-08-26T20:38:00.005+03:00

Three days to go: The flat is a mess. We still have no tckets for the first leg of the trip. We haven't packed. We haven't said goodbyes to friends and family. We have no necessary currencies.

Some might say that this is not the most promising start to a trip that is supposed to last for several months and stretch from Tampere to Beijing, and then even further if we still have some money left. I'm not too worried though, this is how we seem to be doing things on regular basis. At least it will be interesting to see what happens when two people who would fail spectacularly in an attempt to organise a piss up in brewery try to embark on a world trip. I reckon we will make it, even if at the moment it seems that we will struggle to even get out of Finland.

On a more positive note, we have managed to get the visas and jabs needed for the trip. That wasn't a walk in the park though. My shoulders are like Swiss cheese after all the jabs, and my nerves need more alcohol than my liver can take just to get over the stress from the bureaucracy involved in getting the visas. But we managed, I think that's a good start.

I guess I should get back to panicing about the lack of preparations for the trip, rather than write about it. I'm not sure if it will be any more fruitful but at least I look like I'm doing something sensible. Perhaps.