Beijing - Everybody is Kung Fu fighting...

Nee How - Beijing is great...I ate so much Peking duck last night I had to waddle home! Really have been enjoying Beijing though...if you like the movie BladeRunner, you'll love Beijing - wait until nightfall, wait until its raining then wander the back alleys imagining you're Harrison Ford and everyone else is cybernetically modified. I know, i know, I need to get out more.

They are gearing up massively for the Olympics in 2008 and are really keen to be perceived as a friendly, progressive nation - funny how something like getting the olympics can change the psyche of a nation. Population of 1 billion people though, unbelieveable, though I just read that today the population of the US will hit 300 million. We hiked 12 km of the 6000km Great wall yesterday - a million people died building it 200 years BC, and it really does defy description. Shame after all that effort that Genghis Khan just bribed the sentries to get through!

India next, can't wait. Looks like it will be the easiest to travel through in terms of language, as so many people speak English. Loving the travel, bring on the curries and hope you are all SUPER. Harrison.

Mongolia

People smile. I'd forgotten that, being in Russia for a fortnight. And people in Mongolia even laugh - outrageous! The majority of the train journey is behind us now. The four nights and three days on the train were great, though cabin fever had set in by Night 4. There's only so long Uno, Scrabble, books and noodles can keep a human sustained before they start to crack. Thankfully we had a great carriage attendant called Sergei who was a gem. May have helped that he walked in on our compartment buddy Laureen with her top off too I guess. Landscape didn't change all that much really - the Section of the Urals we passed through was at night and low, there were lots and lots and lots of silver birches, snow, grim towns and industry - but it was still an unbelievable experience to lie in your bunk and watch it all slide by in moonlight thanking your lucky stars you live in Australia. There were many beautiful ranges, houses, lakes and frozen marshes and the list goes on.

Our couple of days out at Lake Baikal were awesome though - this lake contains 20 of the worlds unfrozen freshwater and is more than a mile deep. The first snow for the season fell while we were there and the place we stayed had good views of the lake and we just relaxed mostly. The next leg of the train journey from Irkutsk to Ulaan Bataar in Mongolia involved the border crossing and was a nightmare really. We ended up stuck in a stationary carriage for 9 of 11 hours with toilets available for 10 minutes of that whole period. Our attendant was an absolute horror and there where cheers when we finally left Siberia and hit Mongolia!

Today the sun is shining, people are smiling and laughing, there was snow falling earlier, we're off to a Mongolian bbq restaurant and then out to the Gers - the round felt tents so characteristic of these friendly nomads. Wish us luck...PAS>.

Farewell Moscow, hello Siberia.

Not much tim efor this blog we're onto the train for four days soon....through the Ural mountains that separate Asia and Europe and then into Sibneria heading for Irkutsk on the border with Mongolia. Quite happy to leave Moscow it is not a friendly place and there sure isn't a service oriented industry here! The underground was something though - more than 9 million people a day use it - more than the New York and London undergrounds COMBINED....