Hanoi

The big celebration in China 1st of october even exist in VietNam. People are preparing for the event and is everywhere.

Se this movie:

Nanning 25-27/9

Its very cheap to go by train in china. We got great help from our hostel in Beijing so it only cost us 460SEK to go through whole china to Nanning in the south. On the train we met a guy from Nanning that could speak only a little english, and everyone on the train in our closest area asked questions to us threw him. The service is very different in China and Sweden. On the chinese train there is around 50 working people, 2 conductors on each wagon and some more selling things like you didnt know (toys for kids, food, fruits, beer, shavers...). And they are playing soft instrumental music all the time :) I think sweden has something to learn about trains :)

Nanning was a really soft place. Not that much tourists as in Beijing. And everywhere you go you heard sound of chinese girls giggle and pointing to us. Somewhere you heard 'beautiful hair' and somewhere else you could feel a hand through your hair :) Market was very cheap, no need to bargain. We were eating dinner at the streets just like the chineses for only 5SEK.

In Nanning we visited a great national park, bigger than Porson in Lulea.

We ordered some strange food, served on big leaves. It tasted like sushi or something like that so we didnt finish it.

Beijing 21-24/9

The train from Ulan-Bator to Beijing wasnt that special. Some things like we ordered dinner on the train with 4 different money systems (Russian rubel, mongolian turiks, chinese yen and american dollar) just to use all old money from the pocket. One other funny thing was at the border Mongolia-China. Then our conductor checked the temperature on all persons on the train and wrote it down on a paper.

Well, the first impression of Beijing from the Railway station was huge. Really nice city. At 19.00 we met the german guys and some more swedish guys in front of Mao. Then we started go around in Beijing drinking one beer at each place.

Following day we booked train tickets to Nanning and a trip to the great wall of china. Then we took a break at an internet cafe. Strange feeling there. They scanned our passport before we could use any computer, and then there was a chinese behind us all the time surfing, checking what sites we visited. And the best sites were blocket by chinese government (facebook, youtube, this blog). Thats why i havnt written something before now (sitting in Hanoi, VietNam).

In the afternoon 22/9 we visited the famous silk market in Beijing. There we met the Holland friends from our trip in Mongolia. What a coinsidence! They told us to decide what we need before enter the market, hehe, but we didnt do that and ended up 5 hours later with 6 bags or something full with stuff. We forget the time and to eat. It was very fun going around and bargain with all the nice chinese girls.

23/9 - We started 06.30 with a van to Jinshanling. There we walked 10km on the great wall to Simatai. On the wall we passed 30 towers, and at every tower there was old man and women selling stuff. You could hear sound of 'water cola beer', 'water, cola, beer' or 'tshirt,tshirt,tshirt' very fast.

When we got to Simatai we met Ilse and Rud from Holland again. Very strange!!!



24/9 - we spend the day before the train to Nanning in the forbidden city. And there, haha, it so funny, many chinese people got it more interesting to photograph us than the forbidden city itself. I dont know how many chinese that now has a picture of two swedes visiting forbidden city, and some of them even asked if we had time to stay beside them on the photos.

Snowing :)

Ni som inte trodde mig, har kommer beviset pa snokaoset just nu i Ulan-Bator :)

Ulan-Bator pictures

A common street. In the background you can see the State department store where we have been a lots of times buying food and other things.

This is the meat in a common supermarket in Ulan Bator. Doesnt smell that good :)

The cakes was very nice and extraordinary.

Mongolian tea with milk, butter and salt. After a while you get used to it.

Picture from the Natural History Museum with Dinosaurs, this was the best picture we could make because of a lots of 'No Camera' signs.

IKEA in UB (Ulan Bator)

Today it is snowing in Ulan-Bator. Believe it or not but it is very cold and i was buying winter gloves.

Tomorrow we will take the transmongolian train to Beijing.

Mongoliet - en drom slog igenom 14-18/9

Vi lyckades halka in pa en 5-dagars trip med ett par fran Holland med personlig chauffor och guide for 300000 turiks (1500SEK). Den skumpiga turen pa de mongoliska vagarna borjade till ett naturreservat (Hustai), dar fick vi punka for forsta gangen. Efter ytterligare en stund ute i oknen blev motorn overhettad sa vi passade pa att besoka ett narliggande nomadtalt. Det bjods pa hastmjolk och torkad farost, sen ville de kora en dryckeslek med hastmjolken, den som forlora fick dricka en skal eller sjunga en sang. Det blev en 'blinka lilla' :) En lustig notering var att de har solseller, parabol, tv o mobiler i sina nomadtalt. Inte riktigt vad man hade forvantat sig.



Forsta dagens solnedgang var inte att leka med....



Tisdag 15/9 borjade vi dagen med en kamelridning ut bland sand-dynorna. Mycket speciell upplevelse, harlig sand och skon sol :) Saknar inte Lulea-klimatet :P



Jag fick tillfalle att traffa nomadfamiljen och den lilla dottern pa bilden, tydligen sa gar alla storre barn i skola inne i byarna och sover i korridorer. De kommer bara hem pa loven.



Pa eftermiddagen blev det en langre resa med den ryska minibussen in bland bergen, omkring 6-7 timmar. Men otroligt mycket sevart pa vagen av det mongoliska landskapet.

Pa kvallen inne i nomadtaltet larde vi hollandarna vand-tia och njot av att kunna elda i brasan da klimatet bland bergen var mycket kallare.

Onsdag 16/9 - spannande forsta gang pa en hast i tva timmar upp i bergen, gick helt ok, fast den vagrade lyssna, tyvarr nog sonderkord av turister. Vi bodde hos nomader nara den ena av mongoliets tva stora floder. Det speciella har var vattenfallet som endast har rinnande vatten i augusti och september. Det regnar bara 40 dagar om aret i mongoliet :)


Pa eftermiddagen anlande 3 svenskar fran Goteborg som vi ocksa traffat pa taget, lustigt det har att svenskarna ska vara overallt :) Vi traffa ocksa tva tyskar som bjod in oss till en jattestor backpackerfest i Beijing den 21 september. De har bjudit in alla de traffat under resan, sa det ser vi med spanning fram emot.

Torsdag 17/9 - besokte vi mongoliets gamla huvudstad, mycket sevart och kul med marknaden precis bredvid dar vi fick ova upp prutkunskaperna. Lite intressant var det att se hur stort Jingis Khan imperium var en gang i tiden.

Pa kvallen socialiserade vi med alla backpackers i gamla staden med ol, chips, god mat och lite yatzy.

Fredagen blev endast en resdag, de daliga vagarna och de stora avstanden gjorde att vi inte var hemma forran 16.30.

Mongolian food

haha, now the stomack has been telling me what it thinks about cheap and tasty mongolian food :) It's still ok, but i hope it want be any worse in this week staying out in tents and riding horses and camels.

I'll tell you more on Friday when i'm back to town.

/Linus Bloml;f
Ulan-Bator
Time 22:37

Ulan-Bator

This morning at 8 o clock we arrived to Ulan-Bator (2 o clock in the night in sweden).
We got a great hostel to stay in for only 6 dollars a night (Golden Gobi). There we got warned for robbers that makes groups of 7-8 and makes a crowd around you and steal money and cameras. So we have been very careful when going outside the hostel, we never go alone, and always hide money and that very close to body.

We were changing our russian rubels into mongolian money at a bank in Ulan-Bator. Then we got to a restaurant and ordered a lots of different food, when we wanted to pay we got confused, the food bill was on 9600 mogolian money and that is only 40SEK shared by 3 eating people. So its very cheap to eat out in Ulan-Bator.

Today we also took a shower in cold water, and managed a trip with 2 other people from Hungary for 5 days starting tomorrow. We will reach the desert and sleep with the nomads, riding camels and a lots of things. So this will be the last you hear from me for a while.

The transmongolian railway

We started by the train on Tuesday 8 sept, and got a bit confused in many ways bording the train. At first there was a chinese conductor tocking our train tickets both for the train to Ulan-Bator but even more strange the ticket for the distance Ulan-Bator to Beijing. Later we discovered that the chinese guys had fullcontrol of who we are and what we do.

The other confusing thing was that everyone seemed to be swedish on the train. If i would make a guess 50% of the train tickets were sold to swedish. Mostly young guys and old womens.

One thing we were bringing on the train was cheap russian vodka (20SEK for 0.5liter). Very useful when eating strange food from the stations by local russian people.

In Perm we would by Noodles, and the russians dont speak english, bot even a little, so it was going back to younger days, pointing with fingers. That made us a problem, we wanted to packages with noodles and asked if it cost 100 rubles with raising 10 fingers, and the women in the shop was thinking we wanted 10 boxes, so we want back on the train with a lots of food :) Happily they were not expensive. We still have some left here in Mongolia now, and we use them to give to poor children on the streets.

On the train the time difference was a bit confusing because of always changing and the russian man in the restaurant was serving after moscow time. Bit we learned that it was much more easy and cheaper to buy food on the stations and the trains stops like every 4 hour.

On the train we spent in total 103 hours. On that time we were learning from the chines conductors how to count to 10 in chinese, we did 'campei' with them (Mao and Tje).

In Omsk we had 20 minutes on the station and wanted to go in the stationhouse and look around, when we come back a new train had coming and blocking ours so then we got a little panic and was running around the train to reach ours. And because of the chinese conductors having control of the passangers in their wagon (2 chinese guyson each wagon) we was forced to jump on the train in correct wagon.

The perople i met on the train:

Tomak- a polish guy that we also continued the trip in the first day in mongolia with.

Morten - a danish middleage man that had a good sense of humor.

Anders - a norwegian guy we meet at first time in Arlanda waiting for the airplain to Moscow.

Joel - a swedish from Uppsala we met on a very early morning in Tumen, and his cabin was empty so we eat our breakfast there.

We shared cabin with Tomak and Morten. The neighbour cabins was full with older swedish womens, but that was nice. It was like having 10 grandmothers in the wagon, and they also had a guide wich we were able to ask questions about future trip.

Yesterday, at Saturday 12/9, we stayed for border controls in 6 hour. And we were warned before that to save bottles because train toilets are always closed when train is standing still. During the bordering we met 2 mongolian girls, Ocka and Ninde, at first it was very hard to communicate because they only speak mongolian. But after a while with a worldmap and a paper and a chess game, we had a lot of fun together. We learned some easy phrases in mongolian language and played games with them. They also helped us with all the papers to fill in on the border control about health adn visa and migration cards (all in mongolian).

Pictures from Moscow

Transibiriska jarnvagen

Efter en lang dag pa rundvandring i Moskva ska vi alldeles strax kliva pa taget som ska ta oss till Mongoliet. Mycket spannande. Vi traffade ett antal engelsman som skulle gora i princip samma resa och vi kanske slar folje med dem i Ulan Bator.
Det blir ett kort inlagg denna gang da tiden inte racker till.

//Linus

Report from Moscow

Today me and Christian arrived to Moscow. The time difference is 2 hours, everything is written in Russia, and the metros are old and very noicy.
But we are doing fine, just took us some time to get russian rubles from the bankomat because we were guessing where to press the buttons.
Even to understand and use the metro system was quite hard, but we wroted numbers on a paper and handled it over to the women in the -payment box- and after a while we got some tickets, not the tickets we wanted but it worked and it was cheep. About the money, its very nice to shop food or tickets because prices are low and you got nearly 5 rubles for 1 swedish. To dinner we bought som russian food at the supermarket that tasted like smashed potatoes in some soft bread.

The hostel we are living at is very nice, we have free internet, shower, kitchen, tv-room and all that for only 100 swedish each night.

Tomorrow we will see Moscows red square and the famous Pokrovsky Cathedral that we are used to see on Kefir yoghurt package.

Now time is 01.24 russian time.

//Linus

The trip

This is the trip in details: