Tips and tales for anyone intersted in travelling
A city like no other I have been to before, Beijing is BIG! Well more accurately, it’s HUGE! But, thanks to the 2008 Olympics, getting about, even for non-Mandarin speakers, is easy and inexpensive. With 16million people needing to get from A to B in China’s capital city, the only things a visitor needs to…
So, there was an Englishwoman, Irishwoman, Hong Kong born Australian and Singaporean in a Peking Duck restaurant…no this isn’t the start of a tasteless Bernard Manning joke and no the duck wasn’t peeking! However, it led to a miscommunication reminiscent of “Fork Handles” that Ronnie Barker (R.I.P) would have been proud of! After ordering and…
[slideshow] After a couple of days in Beijing, someone stumbled across the aptly named band – “Whitest Boy Alive” listed in Time Out Beijing. We were all feeling pretty white and western ourselves after being continually stared at by the locals, plus still exhausted from the end of the Vodkatrain and another dose of culture shock. We needed a break…
[slideshow] Stretching more than 6,000km and one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, the Great Wall of China is indeed great. The iconic fortification, built more than 2,000 years ago to protect China from invasion (rather unsuccessfully at times), is an incredible feat of engineering that is as impressive to look at as it is…
[slideshow] Whilst travelling I have lived by the rule that I would try anything once, maybe not a second time, but I would at least give it a go. However, I broke my own rule instantly at the Donghuamen night market in Beijing, with snacks on offer to turn even the sturdiest of stomachs… Everyday from…
[slideshow] Following a 6am start to catch the 7.15am train from Ulan Bataar to Beijing and an interesting border crossing and bogie change interlude we arrived in Beijing the following day at 2.15pm, with mixed feelings about where we had been and what lay ahead. The last leg of the journey was the plushest train yet…LED…
[slideshow] Travelling from one country to another by train is a strange experience compared to other forms of transport. When you reach a new country via plane, boat or car, it is obvious when you have arrived – you join the endless immigration queue, the signs have changed to a new language and the people often…
[slideshow] Reading through my last couple of posts, I’m not sure I gave Mongolia its dues as a place to visit. Although it is hard to find many people who have travelled here, the handful that have seem to have spent months in Mongolia and found many things to keep them occupied. Plus, a the…
The food came as a bit of a surprise – it wasn’t included in the trip and we were told we didn’t need to bring supplies, so we did pay over the odds for a range of meat and lard dishes in various guises. The descriptively titled first meal of ‘meat noodle soup’ was revolting…
[slideshow] Following a day of sightseeing in Ulanbataar (which is all you really need to get a general feel for the place) and an overnight stay in the comedy hotel, we took a 50km bus trip into the Outer Mongolian countryside to stay at the Terelj National Park Reserve. The scenery was spectacular and for…