Now Google have teamed up with Russian Railways, to offer the ultimate in virtual travelling: a trip on the Trans-Siberian railway!

If you have a spare week or so but can’t leave your computer because you are addicted Facebook, then why not open this in another window, and you can have the best of both worlds.

That’s right, the entire length of the track has been filmed and embedded into a Googlemap so that you can experience the whole journey. Not only can you watch everything you might see out of the window, but you can listen to light-hearted tidbits like the whole of War and Peace by Tolstoy.

If you’re wondering who on earth Russian Railways are, it is relatively self-explanatory, but if you want more info then I’d watch this video interview with the cheerful chap who heads up the company. In his words (and I quote): “Yearly, we are carrying like one billion three hundred million passengers”. Blimey.

I personally would prefer the real thing, especially as at the end of the week I’d be in Asia, rather than still sat in front of my computer. But it’s a cool idea, and here at Loco2 the journey-planning tool we’re releasing soon has some similar features in terms of helping you know what to expect on a long rail-based adventure.

Photo credits: Brostad, Denis Tang, Magical World

To go with the general shake-up of the site’s design, there are a lots of exciting new features to feast your eyes upon.

Firstly, we now have the holiday ideas section to go along with the expanded festivals and adventures sections. It’s also now possible to fully search the site using the box in the top-right of every page.

But the thing that has really been taking blood, sweat and tears (and a fair amount of money) to create, is the new journey planner. For the moment this is only available to a limited number of users as we need help to test it and check everything works. So please sign up, and if you’re quick then your account should be confirmed within a few days.

To coincide with the launch of the new site, we’re really keen to start responding more proactively to all feedback, hence the massive button on the left-hand side of every page. The Loco2 team (who you’ll be hearing more about soon) are here to help. We’ll be updating everything far more regularly than before, plus making ongoing improvements to all aspects of the site.

So stay tuned, and remember kids, don’t go crazy, go loco!

We visited all the tourist hot spots: the Kremlin with its mosque-like domes, Red Square with its worn out cobbles, and the incredible St. Basil’s cathedral. Legend has it that after it was completed Ivan the Terrible had the eyes of its architect poked out so that he could never make anything so beautiful again. Seems a little excessive to me, though it is rather a nice building. From there we wandered over the river to see the trees of love; sculpted from metal and hung with thousands of padlocks by newlyweds, these were a source of great interest – do you suppose divorcees come back with bolt cutters? Having spent all too long wandering the streets and eating delicious burek (бюрек – baked pastry cheesy goodness) we dashed back to Red Square just in time to see the changing of the guard and get in line for the mausoleum of Lenin.

Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and Lenin. It’s official I’ve got the Communist hattrick. All these gents have now had the pleasure of my company in all their waxy formaldehyde glory. I’m expecting an honourary Socialist Party membership any day now, complete with KGB security access and some sort of medal. Jokes aside I have been amazed just how many people still revere these former tyrants. I mean Ho Chi Minh seems like a stand up guy all things considered, but Mao, Lenin…really?! A few million deaths aren’t enough to put you off eh, not bothered by widespread persecution? Last year Russians voted Lenin as Man of the Century with Stalin as a close second (STALIN!!!! Honestly?) I’m baffled. But in a way that makes the history all the more interesting.

Our second and final stop in Russia was St. Petersburg; a sprawling mass of palaces, grand promenades, parks, bridges and McDonalds рестораны. There I made the terrible mistake of going to the Hermitage museum where I enjoyed some art, over 1000 rooms of it to be specific, and slowly felt my love of life slip between my fingers. OK, well not my love of life exactly, but certainly my appreciation of paintings of Jesus (which if I’m honest didn’t have a high threshold in the first place). This sadly quashed my appetite for museums and I spent the remainder of my trip deliberately avoiding anything that might fall under the category of a museum. That is with the exception of the Vodka Museum, which, as I’m sure you can imagination sits happily in the grey area between museum and bar.

“Vodka. Connecting People”, proclaimed the Nokia-inspired hat which Vicki had acquired somewhere between the nettle vodka and the chilli shots. We’d learned rather a lot about the distillation process, and looked at pictures of people who had something to do with vodka (one of whom looked rather a lot like Sean Penn). Then we tasted a medley of vodkas and proceeded to forget everything we had learned, including what exactly Sean Penn was doing there in the first place. Honey, cranberry, chilli, and nettle vodka were all duly tasted, washed down with beer and gherkins. Delicious. Then came a couple of expensive ones: Beluga (not, I was assured, made from whale) and Marmot (not to be confused with the small rodents I was eating in Mongolia). These were the final nails in my coffin and before we knew it Vicki and I were in full flowing conversation with a troupe of scary looking business men, and dancing to Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen, proving that Russian’s aren’t like coconuts at all, you just have to know their poison.

Despite the stereotype, Russians are not a miserable people. They do have a sense of humour, and laugh appropriately when they catch a ridiculous girl, mid-somersault, rolling down the aisle of a train. Any country that is host to this many mullets (retro hairstyle of 80s fame: “business up front, party out back”), must be good for a laugh. However, they don’t immediately crack a smile at you on meeting and their facial expressions may appear, to the untrained eye, to fall under the category of stabby. But it’s all a facade. On our last night in Russia we went to a bar and found ourselves without a table. The only spare seats in the entire bar were alongside a pair of mean looking Mafia types; leather jackets, shifty gazes, intriguing scars, definitely the sort of men who are in the “waste disposal” industry. We looked around for an alternative, but finding none we accepted our fates (donned our bullet proof vests) and took a seat. The first few minutes passed nervously, but then, as if by magic we broke the ice and before we knew it we were knocking back tequilas and dancing to Grease Lightning. I should have known their weakness. It’s just like the Russians on my cargo ship all that time ago. All they really want is to get a bit drunk and dance to bad music: rum and Abba for the sailors, vodka and Queen for the business men and tequila and Grease Lightning for these Mafioso. You just have to know the right combination.

A few days later we were in Estonia, back to the EU, the Schengen zone and a familiar alphabet. No more metro challenges: “what’s our stop called?” “It’s called tablecloth, starfish, backwards R, man jumping through a ring of fire… sounds like robotov-electrov-dimitrov-skaya…RED LINE, RED LINE…GO GO GO!” No more mystery meat: “you want me to eat this miscellaneous offal do you, or this cheese which you have been carrying in the lining of a goat’s stomach for days? Mmmm yes please”. No more monster bus journeys, Valium induced sleeps or train Olympics. No more tasers, reckless umbrella users or daredevil tuk-tuk rides. No more dinners of offal, scorpion or locust. No more mummified Communist tyrants!!! Whatever will I do?

The journey is almost over. Only a few countries lie between me and the United Kingdom. Around the World in 772 days, eat your heart out Michael Palin! Twenty-One countries, two oceans, somewhere in the region of 25,000 miles – of which I flew around 3,000. To my credit I have personally bullied countless backpackers into re-evaluating their choice of transport, and dragged Vicki at least 8,000 miles overland where she would have otherwise flown. I can say hello in a few more languages, and have developed an unshakeable belief in my ability to whatever the hell I want when it comes to bizarre and dangerous journeys. You might even say that I’ve found myself. Ha ha, bollocks, I’m exactly the same. So, goodbye-eee, don’t cry-eee, wipe the little tear from your eye-eee…never again with I darken you e-door with my long winded and unwanted tales. You never asked for them, you probably didn’t read them. So, be free, go forth and prosper.

We began the final leg of our adventure from Mongolia totally saturated with dairy products and severely bruised thanks to ten days on horseback. To the Trans-Siberian… oooohh, aaaaah, the very mention of this journey makes people swoon. An epic journey over thousands of miles, from one continent to another, from the mighty and powerful West to the erm…mighty and powerful East.  Across Siberia with the company of vodka swilling Ruskies, and views of snow-swept tundras and reindeer herders. We imagine a beautiful train. Maybe it’s got velvet curtains, and mahogany panelling or oil burning lamps à la Orient Express. Dream on suckers. This is a former Soviet train.

Let me just clear this up, once and for all. Yes it is an epic route, you can watch incredible landscape whiz past the window and it’s wholly satisfying to know that you have crossed the biggest country in the world, and passed from one continent to another by rail. However, this is a four night, five day journey…on a train and it ain’t got no mahogany! Now I love trains, you probably won’t find a bigger fan when it comes to long journeys (the bus can take a running jump of a large cliff!), but five days is an awfully long time to be sitting on any kind of vehicle non-stop. So perhaps it isn’t necessary for me to say that we became a little bit bored.

We looked out the window a little: trees, mostly alpine, some deciduous; towns, mostly industrial, definitely gray; people, mostly Caucasian, probably Russian. What shall we do now? Cue the fanfare, light the torch…so begins the Trans-Siberian Olympics; an opportunity to do all the things you’ve ever wanted within the confines of a train. Can I fit in the luggage compartment? Yes. Can I get back out of the luggage compartment unassisted? No. Can I fit an entire boiled egg in my mouth, whole, without breaking the shell? Affirmative. Press ups between the bunks? Bring it on. Stand on one leg on the wobbly bit between carriages while the train goes around a corner at 60km an hour? In your dreams Andrews! Somersaults down the aisle before you are busted by the carriage attendant? Three. Well that took about an hour, only 119 hours to go.

Once these activities were exhausted we decided it was time to venture out of our carriage. Maybe there are other small spaces to squeeze into. To be honest I was borderline obese at this point due to boredom induced over-eating so didn’t have high hopes – pot noodles, instant porridge and boiled eggs are a Godsend on this kind of journey but will eventually lead to lardiness of first year student proportions. Put down the fork Kate.

Ours was the first carriage on the train so getting to the restaurant car was an adventure in itself. Eight sets of doors, each with a pre-door door and a post-door door, all guarded by humourless Russian railway employees who clearly hate their job and are suffering from the aforementioned Trans-Siberian obesity crisis. Once you’re through the doors you have to walk down the aisle, all the while being accosted by crazed Mongolians chasing you with the dairy product lunchbox they’ve brought from home (run for your lives!!), and the Russians who look as though they want to stab but probably want to drink vodka and sing along to The Eagles.

Having fought off the various assaults on our progress we made our way towards the end of the train, and then heard the sweet sound of fellow tourists, who we immediately coerced into joining us in the restaurant car. The remainder of the journey passed easily. There’s nothing like a few beers and some board games to pass the time, and there were enough characters on that train to write a small play. There was a batty old English lady who commended us for our first rate mingling: “there aren’t enough young people these days who know the true value of mingling” she said, and then proceeded to talk at length about how they make clotted cream in Devon, and on the role of the potato in international cuisine: “you just can’t go wrong with a potato”. Later we were joined by a pair of 6ft 7″ South Africa twins who challenged us to a game of Scrabble and went on to insist that ja was a legitimate word, “ja bra, it is, ja”. Translation: yes dude, it is, yes…hmmm I think not, but entertaining all the same. And then came Jim from Canada (I am forever meeting Canadians called Jim, have they no imagination!?) who was so happy about finally achieving his dream of doing the journey that he did little else but look out of the back window at the retreating landscape and smile to himself.

The border crossing was an interesting one. Note to self, get a new passport. I have long known that my passport photo isn’t the best likeness. I was sixteen, blurry, and appear to be wearing some sort of heavy eye make-up on (damn you teenage Kate), and roll neck jumper (curse you 90s fashion). The curious effect of all this is that I somehow appear, in the words of one fellow traveller to look “like a small Indian child”. Little wonder that the Russian border guard eyed me suspiciously for what felt like hours.

During those tense minutes I considered pulling out another coconut pun: so I hear that Russians are responsible for numerous deaths on tropical islands as they fall from palm trees…maybe not. This one was among the hardest, and thus most coconutty of all the Russians we’ve met and in retrospect I’m glad I kept my mouth shut. Vicki later informed me that in a recent survey of Russian border officials, over 75% were found to be mentally unstable and inappropriate for any kind of work involving fellow human beings.

Once I was sure we were safely in the country and not going to be flung into Siberia from the train window I was able to relax, get stuck into a book, and a few more pot noodles, and before we knew it we were in Moscow, a little fatter but as happy as ever.

The bustling shopping malls of China quickly seemed a world away, and it soon became clear that this was going to be a trip like no other. Milk derivatives and offal jokes aside, our fortnight in Mongolia was one of the most memorable parts of our jaunt across Asia.

With dehydrated camping meals, fake North Face jackets and woefully inadequate sleeping bags we ventured 360 miles South West from Ulan Bator to Tsetserleg, the capital of the Arkhangai province, to begin a two week venture into the interior. We had booked ourselves onto the most genuine nomadic life experience we could find. This sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? But we had done our research. In the past twenty years numerous nomadic experiences have popped up all over Mongolia, bringing daft tourists into the heart of a fragile community and lining the pockets of foreign tour operators. We were determined to do this properly, and had picked a sustainable geo-tourism, socially responsible type organisation. We were ready for a real Mongolian experience, or so we thought…

We put up our tent, indulged in a little airag (vodka made from the milk of a female horse) and pulled out the trusty phrase book. As with most countries outside of Europe the conversation revolved around Vicki and I being in our twenties, not being married, and not having any children. Curiously, in Mongolia they were also astounded to hear that we didn’t have any animals. Horses? Goats? Yaks? Really…where are your children? Cue puzzled facial expression. We would have this conversation many times. And as the days wore on Vicki miraculously conjured up a couple of kids, a husband and a smattering of livestock, while I remained a lonely spinster with Vicki for a sister and about 7 other siblings. The disappointment in their faces was just too much to bear.

Back in our tent we congratulated ourselves on our authenticity. A little white lie never hurt anyone, besides it gave us something to talk about. Let’s get back to being authentic; where’s the toilet? This question was answered with a smile and a large sweeping arm gesture. When in Mongolia, do as the yaks do… No complaints from me, some of my most memorable toilet visits have been open air – under a starry sky in Egypt, atop a volcano in Nicaragua. So off I wandered into the treeless landscape in search of something to hide behind. Nope. No rocks for you Kate. Not even a shrub. I was forced to hide my derriere behind a yak. This would become a regular occurrence, though be warned that unlike a rock a yak will sometimes wander off.

That night I awoke at 4am to the sound of wolves howling somewhere in the distance. I was shivering, and despite donning every item of clothing I owned I couldn’t get warm. I consoled myself with the fact that this was a very authentic Mongolian experience, and managed to drift off to sleep. The next night I was awoken by a goat tripping over our tent and falling face first into my feet; the night after that a yak had a coughing fit a few metres away; the night after that, wolves scared the herd and four hundred goats ran directly though our campsite. -4˚C at 4am and these things don’t seem quite so funny, and we were not much consoled by the authenticity of the experience. By day fourteen our enthusiasm was severely eroded. The wooden saddles and insane horses had given us mighty bruises, I could barely look at yak milk let alone drink it, and I’d eaten enough offal to put me off meat for life.

On the other hand we had ridden horses through extraordinary landscape, scrambled up rock faces, rolled down hills and fallen off a motorbike. We had a bash at archery, got pretty good at anklebone shooting, made some cheese and used a shotgun. Vicki tried to milk a yak. I tried to ride one. We were both unsuccessful. We had a dance off with a local family, and watched with some extremely homoerotic wrestling. I helped to gut my mate marmot – the obese cousin of the guinea pig, not even remotely similar to marmite – and made sausages out of the intestine and semi-congealed blood of a goat, (delicious?) But most importantly we’d met some real Mongolian characters, good and bad.  Beautiful and sweet children, hospitable and hard working women, hard drinking  old men and everything in between, including my pick for best beard 2009 (see inset).

On the final day of our trip I must admit that we were pretty eager to get back to civilisation. Our faces were wind-burnt, we hadn’t washed since leaving Ulan Bator and Vicki was starting to get a scurvy look about her, but frankly, we were very, very authentic.

We came back to civilisation a few days ago – to beds, running water, toilets and pickpockets. Beer and vegetables were our diet for the next few days as we waited for our train across Russia. We played expats in Ulan Bator, a favourite game of ours that was well honed in Tonga. We hosted a pub quiz and rescued a kitten from the side of a busy road. We did things like cook risotto and make friends with the street vendor who sells boiled eggs. We went to an impromptu party and got our names on the wall of fame for successfully sliding under a chair in under 10 seconds. So you see it’s all very worthwhile stuff, and excellent preparation for a five-day train journey. Roll on Russia.

An unmarked van dropped us at the border; we stayed in an empty hotel above a bus station, and in the morning we were driven by a toothless maniac, through no-mans land to the edge of the Gobi desert. We were glad to see the back of Mao, and even happier to wave goodbye to a billion queue jumpers.

Mongolia was our heart of darkness. Yaks, gers and Genghis Kahn had been the topic of our conversation for months, and this portion of our trip had been booked far in advance. From one extreme to another: overnight we passed from one of the world’s most densely populated countries to one of it’s most barren. Mongolia’s vast countryside is home to fewer than 2 million people and the horse to human ratio is 13:1.

We were to spend the next fortnight living alongside some of Mongolia’s many nomadic people, sleeping in tents, riding yaks, milking horses, and slaughtering goats. So of course we were terribly excited. Not only that, but we’d heard that the Mongolians were great fans of cheese.

I love cheese, am fond of butter and used to carry a spoon in my handbag for the express purpose of eating yoghurts. In fact, one might say that I am a fan of milk and its many derivatives. So when I heard from a fellow traveller that Mongolians were keen on dairy products I salivated at the prospect. Cheddar, Brie, Gorgonzola; I knew I was going back to Europe for something. Kraft cheese slices in Tonga, Laughing Cow triangles in Laos, I definitely can believe that this yellow paste isn’t butter. Bring on the deli counter…

Never has a person been so misled. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suffering from calcium deficiency, dairy products are plentiful. You might even say that the country is rife with them. That’s right, rife. In the last week I have eaten an incredible number of things made from milk; cream, fried cream, sour cream, cream cookies, hot milk, hot milk with salt, milk tea, butter, yoghurt, soft cheese, hard cheese, cheese curds, milk with rice, milk with meat, dumplings in milk, and a few questionable hard curd-like things which defy definition. In fact, I have eaten some sort of milk derivative for every meal of every day for what feels like an eternity.

Not only that, the culinary tomfoolery doesn’t stop there…oh no! There’s not only cows to contend with in Outer Mongolia, don’t be fooled. What about some delicious yak milk? Would you care to suckle that hairy cow? Or maybe you’d like some mare’s milk? That’s right, it’s a lady horse. And wouldn’t it be a nice idea to let that mare’s milk ferment so we can all drink refreshing, delicately flavoured sour milky champagne? Or shall we go totally crazy and make vodka out of milk, doesn’t that sound yummy-yummy in your tummy, with it’s totally unique gone off milk aftertaste? Scrumdiddliumptious! Sarcastic, me? Well read it as you will.

Maybe I enjoyed it; maybe I’m going to hang out near dairy farms hoping for warm weather to sour the milk so I can bathe in it. Or maybe I wanted to cry every time I approached a ger and sensed the imminent dairy coming my way. I’ll let you be the judge.

And how do you think I feel about offal? That’s the “culinary term used to refer to the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal”. It’s probably just peachy isn’t it, since I’m a “culinary adventurer” as I have often described myself. That’s karma for you. Brag about scorpion eating, regale you with tales of snail tasting and cricket munching, and then what happens? That’s right. Offal. Insert turbo pub here: I tried to eat the goat’s organs, but they were just offal. Boom boom. That’s the sound of a comedy drum.

Just to clarify I’ve mostly been eating intestine, blood sausage, lungs, liver and a medley of others animal innards. Maybe chuck in a little face for good measure, boil it up, et voila! Goat Surprise. The surprise is it’s 100% goat. If you can get it off the carcass it’s going in. And I ate the lot. As the non-vegetarian it was my duty to take one for the team. Vicki’s not going near it, she doesn’t even like chicken flavour crisps for God’s sake.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger they say, so let’s assume I’m stronger. Please let me be stronger, otherwise that’s a whole lot of offal for nothing. On the plus side I have remixed the classic Peter Andre hit and have paid Vicki back for her abstention by singing “whoa, whoa, whoa, mysterious meat, I wanna get close to you…bring your offal close to mine” at every opportunity. I’m pretty sure that she loves it. Although right now she’s ignoring me so I’m not totally sure. Just kidding, it’s a hit!

Photos: Kate

If you were to multiply this hazard, by say…around 17 million, make each offender roughly 5ft 4 inches – the mean height of people in China, and coincidentally the height at which my eyeballs reside on my face – then you’ve got yourself into a world of full blown jeopardy.  Welcome to Beijing.

To be blunt China is grossly over populated. With 1.3 billion people theirs makes up almost 20% of the population of the entire world! There are 17 million in Beijing alone, and about 3.5 million of them ride the underground on a daily basis. This makes for some delightful face squashing on trains, widespread chaos at anything of interest and frenzied jostling on the pavement. Statistics are one thing, but in reality this is terrifying, especially since almost everyone is staring at you and may or may not want to eat your dog! Add to this the threat of umbrellas, parasols, and tour groups with matching caps and telescopic camera lenses and you’re into a new realm of danger.

Jokes aside, Beijing is in many ways a fantastic city. It is a hot bed of tourist sights. From Tiananmen Square where nothing of historical interest took place in 1989 (no comment), to the Mausoleum where Chinese tourists fight tooth and nail for a peek at the former tyrant. There’s plenty to see and do, so long as you don’t mind the CCTV. On the other hand it is busy, crowded, noisy and smoggy. You can forget a tuk-tuk accident in Thailand, a moped collision in Vietnam, or even a drunken rope swing incident in Laos, the biggest threat to your health in Asia – as far as my small experience goes – is that you will be trampled to death by a group of colour coordinated human sheep outside a Beijing tourist attraction, or cough out your lungs. Nothing major.

Katie Melua tells us there are 9 million bicycles in Beijing. Now doesn’t that sound romantic? Lots of cyclists winding between ancient pagodas and lakes overgrown with Bamboo, maybe the odd Giant Panda lazing in the shade. Ah-hem…what about the cars Miss Melua? And the 6 lane motorways, the concrete, and the tenement blocks and ‘Beijing Lung’; what about the buses, taxis, and mopeds? Noise pollution, air pollution, space pollution…did I mention 17 million reckless umbrella users? If this kind of overpopulation is the future you can count me out. Someone’s going to lose an eye…it’ll all end in tears.

Despite feeling the need to constantly repeat these age-old Dadisms, I’m not one to be easily dissuaded. And if four months of Asian adventures have taught me anything it’s how to use my elbows as weapons. So I fought through crowds, wore sunglasses as safety goggles, and trod on people’s toes as a pre-emptive strike. I was greatly rewarded for my efforts, and though I left Beijing a little bruised it was worth the effort. In the space of just a few days in the capital we saw Mao lying in State, entered the (formally) Forbidden City, cycled around a nice lake, impersonated Mongolian warriors at the Great Wall, ate some scorpions and took a bobsleigh down a mountain. What more could you possibly ask for?

It was a city that I loathed at the time, and if I’m truly honest I wouldn’t like to go back. But thanks to our old friend retrospect, it doesn’t seem so bad after all. I still shudder at the sight of tour groups, the guide gesticulating wildly with no concern for passing pedestrians, and I automatically shield my eyes when I spot anyone under six feet tall in command of an umbrella, but looking back it was just another notch on my travelling bedpost and all part of the China experience.

A brief jaunt to “nearby” Xian (600 miles or so) – pandas, a tandem bicycle, karaoke and an 8000 strong terracotta army – and it was almost time to leave the country. What awaited us was the most exciting part of our overland journey so far: Mongolia and the trans-Siberian railway. No more battling with the Chinese alphabet, no more “no chicken, pork or beef, I’m a vegetarian” noodle soup dance for Vicki, and most excitingly, no more huge crowds, and definitely no more umbrellas. On the other side of the border lay the Gobi desert: horses, goats, a barren landscapes and a nomadic population of less than 2 million people TOTAL. Bring it on.

Photos: Kate

It seems this was a good introduction to Hong Kong. It’s a rich man’s Asia; all sky-scrapers, bright lights and Imax cinemas. Far fewer filthy guesthouses for $1 a night complete with cardboard walls and cockroach infestations. You could still buy a faux-lex, and sit at a roadside noodle house, but if you want to stick to budget here you’ll have to work a hell of a lot harder.

With that in mind, we boarded the immaculate metro and took ourselves to Kowloon in search of budget accommodation. Our Lonely Planet seemed a little thin on the ground when it came to cheap and cheerful in Kowloon – $15 a night!? You’re having a laugh. And so it was that we took ourselves in a backpacker’s paradise, the infamous, and ironically named Chungking Mansions.

Described by Wikipedia as “a centre of drugs, and a refuge for petty criminals, scammers, and illegal immigrants” – a reference I found while finding out exactly how many rooms have been crammed into this seventeen story death trap (one thousand nine hundred and eighty) – it seemed like just the place for us, and at $5 a night, much more our style. Not only that, but after weeks of cultural homogeneity in China it was a pleasure to be surrounded by people from all over the world for a change. No longer were we the lone foreigners amid a sea of staring Chinese locals, the Mansions were home to people from all corners of the globe, and it was buzzing with energy.

The Mansions are full of dodgy dealers, curry houses, pirate DVD salesmen and exposed electrical wiring. We fit right in. Vicki and I are well practiced at shooting down unwanted offers of tailor made suits, stolen watches and marriage so we felt right at home, and wasted no time in digging into a superb meal of daal and chapattis before going out exploring. We hopped aboard the ferry to Victoria Harbour and found ourselves in a different world. One country, two systems my arse! Hong Kong city is another kettle of fish entirely.

My initial reaction to Hong Kong was one of disdain. Granted, getting my hands on a veggie sub after weeks of mystery meat in China was a treat at first, but when I realised that fast food was all we could afford I suddenly longed for the bargains and culture of the Asia I’d lived in for the last 3 months. Where were the roadside beers of Vietnam, the deep fried locusts of Laos and impromptu dance-offs of Cambodia? All these polished floors, bank managers, and hotel lobbies were getting me down.

We strolled through the pristine network of pedestrian walkways, and looked at well-mannered drivers through Perspex windows. We window-shopped in Dior, and got lost in Gucci. We ate dim sum in a café staffed by men who looked like butlers; and even caught a funicular railway up Victorian Peak to pose alongside a waxwork of Jackie Chan, but somehow I wasn’t quite satisfied. It was all too shiny for me. I felt like I was trapped in a parallel universe somewhere between Milton Keynes, Harrods and China town. So we took ourselves back to the dodgy side of town and approached some men outside Chungking Mansions. By appearance I would say that they were probably petty criminals, drug dealers and illegal immigrants, but who better to ask about a good night out when you’re on a strict budget.

That is how, dear readers, we found ourselves at Hong Kong’s most exclusive bar, club and restaurant alongside hundreds of other revellers. Beers for a couple of bucks, music, dancing, neon lights and more snacks than you can handle. They had beer, Pepperami and Quavers, all for under a fiver. What is this über-cool secret underground hangout I hear you cry; the Milk & Honey of Hong Kong, the Mayfair Club of Kowloon? Why it’s the 7/11 of course! That’s right folks, the convenience store we all know and love has risen to a new level in Hong Kong. No longer an afterthought to a big night, a stop-off on the way home, here, the 7/11 is the destination. And what fun we had.

We awoke the next morning with hangovers worthy of a very expensive night out and patted ourselves on the back. Who needs top shelf spirits and waiters in uniforms when the cashier will open your beer for you at the counter? There was life outside of  Dolce & Gabbana after all, you just have to know where to look. Funnily enough, after all my worrying about leaving my creature comforts in Australia, it was the grittier side of Hong Kong which excited me. The lowlights were my highlights. We were happy to wave goodbye to the land of HSBC, SONY and the world’s only Feng Shui Disneyland, and boarded one of the twice-weekly trains to Beijing. Overnight this 21^st Century space shuttle train would shoot us 1350 miles in the blink of an eye, and take us from one grossly overpopulated city to another.

Despite the sensory torture, Vicki and I were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, having rocked up at Kunming station at 5am that morning with a vague notion of catching a train. I wouldn’t normally advise this sort of reckless behaviour, but one of the major problems with Chinese train travel is that there isn’t really a central booking system. While it’s possible to find timetables and get an idea of price from places like this (they have an excellent map), it’s rarely possible to buy tickets except at your point of departure.

Besides, our well-rehearsed routine of pointing and jumping (stick man on stilts, telegraph pole, dance party) only just got results in person so we didn’t fancy our chances of explaining 桂林 over the phone. We’d got lucky this time and managed to secure a berth on a train leaving that day, what a result.

The train was packed – as with everything else in China – and our hard sleeper berths, while not “hard” per say lacked in the way of headroom, so we ventured to the restaurant car for beer, a game of cards and a little nǐ hǎo. Here we made a handful of new friends, and sparked all manner of animated conversation among the railway staff, before retiring to bed for a blissfully peaceful sleep. This is where low carbon travel really pays for itself; where else would you be invited to play dice with old men over a cup of suspicious mushroom tea, or help an aspiring Mongolian poet improve his English vocabulary before retiring to a bunk where the train rocks you to sleep like a little environmentally friendly baby? I may not need to say it, but I am a fan of the sleeper train.

At 7am we were rudely awoken by the music once more – “I’m strong to the finish, cos I eats me spinach”, grrrr. I’ll admit that this part of bus and rail transport in Asia can be somewhat painful on the ears. But we consoled ourselves with a breakfast of fresh mango and spicy noodles (all Chinese trains have a hot water urn) as the train pulled up in Guilin station. Guilin is another “small” town by Chinese standards, with a mere 1.5 million inhabitants. I know I keep hammering this point, but China really is massive and full of people. I am from a small town, so I know one when I see it, and Guilin ain’t small. Because of this Vicki and I didn’t take the time to explore, but chose instead to board a bus at the railway station and continue our journey to Yangshuo on the Li River. Compared to it’s neighbour Guilin, Yangshuo is a mere dot on the map, and a lovely dot at that.

Surrounded by dramatic limestone peaks (karst if you’re into your topography, and frankly who isn’t?) Yangshuo looks like something out of Lord of the Rings, and though not populated by elves it was nearly as exciting. Chickens strapped on to the back of bicycles; eels, toads and dog on sale in the market, hundreds of bamboo rafts complete with sun umbrellas floating down river, a canal network running straight through the town. Granted there was ample neon, rip-off DVDs and novelty phones but we’re still in China afterall. I loved it.

From family dinners in an exceptionally friendly hostel and late night games of beer pong, to cooking lessons, and bikes rides, this 300,000 community was by far my favourite place in all of China. We had barely put our bags down before a member of staff burst in to invite us to float down the Li on some old inner tubes, before dragging us up to the rooftop bar to challenge the proprietor to a drinking game. We saw local boatmen dozing on their narrow boats with their domesticated cormorants, clambered around caves and had a mud fight in an underground pool. Vicki took to the skies in a hot air balloon, while I mastered the art of Liar’s Dice. I was having so much fun that I barely slept in 3 days, but the Russian visa was looming ever nearer and we were going to make it the 1000 or so miles to the border, we’d need to get our skates on. And so to Hong Kong.

We had arrived in China the day before after being unceremoniously dumped into no-man’s land by the Vietnamese border guards. We waited nervously on the Chinese side as the guard ruthlessly scrutinised our passports; he looked at me, then at my picture, then back to me, then back to the picture, then at my bag, then me, then Vicki, then back to me. All this took around a minute, which isn’t long in the scheme of things, but if you were walk outside right now and lock eyes with a total stranger, let me tell you, a minute holding their gaze would feel like an awfully long time, especially if that stranger had a machine gun. “Aliens are permitted” said the delightful Chinglish sign, so why on earth was it taking so long?

I tried to ease the tension with a little nǐ hǎo, but he continued to stare me down, so I let my attention wander to the evaluation machine on the counter. These are a pretty common appearance at border controls now; a how am I driving sticker for passport authorities if you will. Curiously, this one appeared to be broken and the only button available to press was “very good”; ah Communism, you’re on to a winner there. Pleased that I had evaluated him so well – and so fairly – I was allowed to pass, but could still feel his eyes boring into the back of my head as I walked away. Little did I know that staring would be a key feature of my time in China.

We took ourselves to the nearest noodle house and took a seat by the window, all the better for people watching we thought. After all, as a backpacker, watching the world go by becomes a favourite pastime. What we hadn’t realised was that in China we were interesting to look at, really really interesting. “Moo, mooo, quack, quack”, Vicki had another bash at avoiding mystery meat in her lunch while I did a little chicken dance to hammer the point home. The waitress smiled awkwardly, then began nodding furiously before bringing poor Vic a bowl of mixed carcass. Vegetarianism really is a foreign concept here. While all this was going on we failed to notice the small crowd of locals gathering outside the window for a good old stare. I kid you not, one man literally held his small child up to the window for a better view, and this was just the beginning.

Minutes later we were running across a car park in a desperate bid to catch the only bus to Kunming, a town that looks to be close to the border, but is in fact a 12 hour bus ride away. This is something I would learn quickly about China; it is massive, like really, really big, (insert some sort of comparison to Wales here), big enough so that every place we wanted to visit was at least 12 hours away. Gratefully we made it onto the bus, and began the first of many journeys we would make on a Chinese sleeper bus.

The sleeper bus is a fantastic invention, and one that is yet to make its debut in Europe. In fact, consider this the beginning of my campaign to get some loco2 sleeper buses on the Continent. Granted they ain’t great if you’re tall – I think my 5ft 6” was pushing it a bit – but being able to lay horizontal on a long journey isn’t something that should be sniffed at. And if you’re really lucky you’ll get the added bonus of watching Chinese love songs on video all night long, and a couple of crates of ducks strapped to the roof rack above your head. While not the great sleep you get on a night train, it sure beats a night in a seat on a coach.

I tucked myself into my Vietnamese silk sleeping bag, pad-locked my backpack and tied it to my ankle, ipod in ears, eye patches on. I know it doesn’t sound too glamorous but believe me, when you’ve done a 17-hour coach trip across Mexico with the air conditioning on full pelt, these buses seem like heaven, ducks and all. With that in mind I drifted off to sleep, dreaming of paradise: in the morning we’d be in Shangri-La…

In December 2006 I returned back from travelling around Europe (and a bit of Russia) by train. After a brilliant trip, it was depressing enough having to move back in with my parents and start temping in an inane job in order to get back on my feet financially, but what made it worse is that within three weeks of starting to commute by train (a fifteen minute journey into Oxford) I had been delayed more than during four months of extensive train travel on the continent. It wasn’t even clear who to complain to: First Great Western? Network Rail? ATOC? The Government? Capitalism?

The ridiculous complexity of British train travel is pretty staggering, so when I started to read how other European countries run their networks I felt a glimmer of hope.

In Germany, the rail network is run by one semi-public company – Deutsche Bahn – and the simplicity of this arrangement leads to much more efficient operation than we see in the UK. Instead of different private companies running different parts of the network, DB are able to treat all customers the same and give straightforward offers to frequent travellers such as the BahnCard. There are three types available, and each of them applies to the whole national network, as well as giving discounts on travel outside Germany.

What is interesting about the approach Deutsche Bahn are taking is not just that it makes working out the financials of your day-to-day travel a lot more straightforward, but that they are starting to push the boundaries when it comes to utilising technology to promote a more logical approach to integrating different modes of transport.

Here’s an account from Philippe, who uses the Bahn 100 card:

“The core product of course is local and long distance railway service (including high speed train service up to 300 km/h) at a flat rate of approx. 800 US Dollars per month (1st Class) and half of that (400 US Dollars) for Coach Class service, meaning one can use all train services in Germany all the time for one flat rate per month. The product also includes free local public transportation in about 100 major German cities”.

This means that in addition to the train system I can use the local buses, subways, metros and street cars for as much as I want. In addition there is a Car-Sharing and a Bike-Sharing product integrated in the service. I can get to a city by train and jump straight into a car at that train station (sometimes the car is parked right next to the train platform I arrive) with the swipe of my customer card on an hourly basis (actually it is even charged in 15 minute increments). I don’t have to fuel the car and I just return it where I got it. Much easier/more economic and more convenient than renting a car for a day at my destination. I only do this if no public transportation gets me to my final destination.

The same concept is available in major cities with bikes only here the bike can be dropped off anywhere in the city. I have not tried this option yet. The service also includes business lounge access at all major railway stations. When I have to haul heavy things for personal use I also use the Car-Sharing option in my home town. I guess this is a tiny bit of a personal car still left in me.

As well as this, Deutsche Bahn offer a journey-planning tool for installation on your mobile. Here’s Philippe again:

“Until recently I did all my travel planning in advance and it was a bit cumbersome at times to print out the schedules the evening before and if I changed plans I had to obtain new schedules. But this changed. I now use a Navigation System which is installed on my mobile telephone.

It basically works like a car navigation system but all routing is done by taking all possible means of public transportation into consideration. Small pedestrian walks are being included with a map and the route is constantly being updated based on current developments in the route. It really works like a car navigation system only that I can sit back relax, read a book or work on my laptop during the sections of my journey that I am on a train. The gain in time that I would otherwise waste on the road driving a car is tremendous”.

Now before you accuse me of having some sort of underhand deal with Deutsche Bahn (if anyone from Deutsche Bahn is reading I am fully receptive to any such offer), the German rail system is far from perfect. First of all, there is a debate raging in Germany about whether or not Deutsche Bahn should be fully privatised, and it’s hard to make a judgement on how capable a private company would be at continuing to push for the right kinds of technical advances whilst keeping prices low and reliability high for the customer. If the UK is the best example Europe has of a fully privatised rail network then it’s not looking good.

Then there’s the local vs national issue of rail planning. At risk of sounding like even more of a geek than I already do, it’s worth comparing the German and Swiss rail networks. In Switzerland the equivalent network card to the Bahn 100 sells twice as much because of the fact that the Swiss have focused on linking smaller towns and villages instead of simply pushing for high-speed connections between large cities. This approach discourages increasing urbanisation, and emphasises a distributed perspective on travel (fewer busy transport hubs and concentrations of population). Also, the word on the street is that the Swiss literally have 100% of their trains running on time.

So how far away from all this are we in the UK?

Bloody miles. The Train Line has just announced that it will be introducing a ’smartcard’ for travel by 2009, based on ITSO technology. This will basically be like an Oyster card but for national train travel, and you should be able to top it up wit
h similar ease. This sounds like a step in the right direction, but again I’m unsure of how easy it will be to cut through all the crap created by having loads of different companies with millions of different fares.

Much as I hate to say it, the Tories came up with one suggestion in their Quality of Life report that is incredibly sensible:

“We therefore propose that the Rail Regulator should be given a remit to demand the simplification of rail ticket structure, and to insist upon the interoperability of rail tickets as well as integrated timetabling”.

Given that it was Maggie the mad Thatcher and John Major who privatised the railways in the first place, I hope that the Tories can sort it out again.

Anyway, I’m starting to sound like a grumpy old man, so let’s get back to the original point: if you want to have a good train-based experience, go to mainland Europe. That is all.

Many thanks to Philippe for all of the research about German and Swiss railways. If you’d like to read a full account of his experience using the Bahn 100 card, read his comments on this great blog.

Post thumbnail:Mohan S

Firstly, there was an unbelievable centrefold picture of a railway station in China where the transport network is being severely disrupted by extreme weather, and I’ve subsequently found a video here. It’s crazy to think that some of these people only see their families in the countryside once a year because of the vast scale of industrial urbanisation. It’s understandable that tensions are running high.

My advice to Emily and Verity in Beijing is to stay put until it all calms down a bit. At least they’ll have time to explore the city properly and not feel guilty about staying in to read their books once in a while!

The second thing I came across was an article about new train routes in Spain. Apart from the fact that it’s great to see competition with domestic flights, it’s interesting to note the differences between the way UK rail has been privatised, and the contrast in Spain (I’m currently researching a more substantial blog on the subject of European transport in general). Note that despite having swivelling chairs and videos, the Spanish trains don’t have WiFi. My first reaction was that they should, but then I thought that actually it’s quite nice to get on a train and do some work without having access to emails or the internet.

Photo & post thumbnail: Kusaker

We can’t believe we’re here already but don’t feel like we rushed through Europe too much. We’ve been able to gauge the feeling of each city (Brussels, Cologne and Warsaw) in which we’ve stayed. We think this has been mainly to do with our couch-surfing experiences: from a chaotic Belgian barmaid who recommended beer that tasted of HP sauce, to the marketing director of Poland’s largest delivery company, ‘Telepizza’. She made us feel welcome in an initially hostile Warsaw. Tonight we are staying with a very learned, very old, French, German, English and Russian-speaking language enthusiast with an orange dog called ‘Orange’ (in Russian).

The trains so far have been brilliant. The most impressive was surprisingly last night’s from Warsaw to Moscow. The decor of our couchette included lacy curtains and Persian-style rugs and seat covers, and we were provided with our own sink and clean sheets. The female carriage attendant was dressed as we had been told to expect of Russian women – in a miniskirt and knee high boots – so we felt rather silly when we left the train in our layers of thermals. Ironically we found ourselves waking up sweating in a train we thought would be the coldest so far. Too hot to sleep, we admired the snow covered tracks outside.

We really feel like we are moving further into the unknown. It’s not just the language barriers – the people seem to be different too. We can’t imagine getting the treatment here that we got from the restaurant touts in Brussels (one of whom proposed to Emily with his “special cocktail” and refused to take no for an answer).

We hope to send you a podcast soon, perhaps including sounds of the Trans-Siberian railway.

PICS

• Top: Festive chocolate sculpture in AMMMMMAZING chocolate cafe. Belgium, of course.
• Middle: Lake Baikal
  
• Bottom: From Russia with love: The door in the bathroom of the nice old man whose house we stayed at in Moscow

Post thumbnail: Neiljs