Las Vegas via Death Valley

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We survived the night in Bakersfield and just arrived to Las Vegas, well maybe not just arrived. Our hotel has a different solution with free internet and its only via cable. The solution is to use Antons laptop as a router and connect my to his via wifi but to be able to configure Windows to do that, what a piece of shit. A few reboots later, a couple of beers and some yelling it suddenly started to work so now we don’t dare to touch anything.

We left Bakersfield as fast as possible and headed for Death valley. It was really cool to just walk around among the sand dunes and rocks. It was only 32 degrees warm but it felt like a 100, at least. Didn’t see any fun animals on the way but we saw warning signs for both cows, deers and turtles. Really? Turtles? In Nevada?!?

I had to drive the last part so now I have been driving in both San Fransisco and Las Vegas and I still think its really easy to drive here. Besides that I was playing with the GPS and almost missed a red light. I saw in the last second, hit the break really hard and the car behind me had to do some emergency maneuver not to hit me. At the same time I told Anton; “That guy wont be happy at me” we saw that it was a state trooper, smile and wave boys, just smile and wave!

We are not staying at the most exclusive hotel or even the fanciest but we are at least staying at the strip, they have their own casino and our neighbor is MGM which is awesome and yes, we are staying at Hooters hotel so lets open the champagne and go crazy cause whatever happens it will stay in vegas.

Shooting range in Las Vegas

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In Vegas everything is expensive, fake and very very fun. The evening started with a couple of beers at the hotel before we headed out along the strip with short breaks along the way to refill our daily intake of beer. We stopped at Cosmopolitan and had a few drinks which were more alcohol than anything else and the size of those ice cubes? I bet one of those were the reason Titanic sunk. At “Paris” we found a drink called Swedish fish which we had to try, worst thing ever! Avoid it at all cost!Today we started at the shooting range instead of pressing sun on a fake beach or something like that. It was a huge queue and it took forever but once it was our time it was totally worth it. We started easy (we thought) with a pistol, Desert Eagle and after that we went for the AR15 and finished with some full auto with an H&K MP5. The Desert eagle was insane,  I was really concerned if I really could hold it back during the recoil and the whole shooting range stopped and everybody where looking at us while we were shooting this hand cannon. The AR15 was a bit boring, so easy and no recoil and the MP5? Well full auto is full auto and its always fun to to frenzy with a full auto gun.

 

Last night in Vegas

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Last day in Vegas which means one last night and then we are heading the roads again. Where…a bit unknown yet but we have been talking about “The Hoover dam” and Grand Canyon and then aim for the direction towards Chicago. So far Las Vegas has fulfilled everything I ever thought about this place. Its really plastic and fake and as long as you have money everything is possible. I would love to stay here for the rest of this trip but I guess that it would end up me broke.

Has met a lot of fun people and yesterday we left the club for some night food in one of their beamers, that the driver had a few drinks before was not something we thought about and the evening ended up on a 24/7 sushi place. Sushi as night food was really good and I have no idea how much we ate but we finished two bottles of Sake at least. Crazy evening but fun for sure!

This day has been spent on the fake beach at out hotel, really nice to cure the hangover on a beach even if its fake.

Hoover dam and Grand Canyon

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With great sorrow in my heart but with an much happier wallet we left the den of iniquity to see more of US. From Las Vegas via/over Hoover dam to Grand Canyon and then to Albuquerque in New Mexico, its a tough name to pronounce but even harder to write. It will be a neat trip through three different states and if I count right around 110 miles. The driving comfort in our Prius is surprisingly good and so far everything has been easier than thought while talking about driving.

After visited the Hoover dam I have only one word, it sucks! Yea, its big or even huge but come on, thats it. You have heard so much about this dam so my expectations might been a little high but I did not get impressed by it, its just a big dam.

Gran Canyon was on the other hand the opposite. Ive heard even more about this place and i did not get disappointed at anything. It would be fun to spend more time here, hiking down the canyon but still, it delivered! I cant make it fair with my camera and photo skills but at least I can give it a try and this is a must see in your life! I would love to come back and just hike around, camp and enjoy the nature!

Driving on to Albuquerque was quit boring but went fine. The only thing that didn’t go as planned was then we stopped for food and the chef forgot our food in the owe.  Guess it happens to more than me when I cook and he started all over but it took some more time than we planned for. We also got attacked by some tumbleweed on the highway, we had just passed a warning sign for some animal and I just saw something moving and headed hard on the brakes, woke up an slumbering Anton an yea…it was just tumbleweed, well now I seen that too.

Another long day in our car

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We followed up yesterdays long trip with another long trip today. This time we aimed for Tulsa in Oklahoma via Amarillo in Texas. Thats means another 100 miles and another drive through three states today…again.  We have more or less just spent the whole day in our car so not many pictures and we been driving through Neva, Arizona, New Mexico and the eastern corner of Texas and I can say like this, Im so tired of sand and mountains right now. It was like heaven when we came to the green and beautiful Oklahoma.

Its been quite boring to make these two days of driving but now we are right in our schedule and does not have to stress to make the rest of our trip, and that is nice!

How we been driving so far
How we been driving so far

St Louis

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In Tulsa we had no idea where to go to have fun so we grabbed a taxi on the street and asked him to drive us to the bar district. As always in US the taxi driver were really service minded and explained the way, how the city was build with different areas and “since this is just a little town there’s not much to do here”. A little town in this case is somewhere around 500 000 citizens which is bigger than the Gothenburg, Sweden second biggest city.

We walked around and tried one bar after another and were always ready to give up, it was just trash and not fun anywhere so we decided to try that Irish pub on the corner and if that also sucks we get back to the hotel and leave St Louis cause this city sucks. Well, we were wrong and once we got into the Irish pub we met some locals and the beer went down in the same rate as the buckets were ordered. After a while our new friends asked if we wanted to join them to another place and an awesome and crazy night had just begun.

Today we drove to St Louis in Missouri. It was not any long trip so we started the day with breakfast at an classic American diner. The food was ok but they cant make coffee here, its thinner than water. On our way we saw a Walmart, of course we had to stop so I can check that of my bucket list but unfortunately I didn’t see any “walmart people” but it was quite fun anyway. We also had to try the famous American fast food, since I’m not a fan of McDonalds we tried “Jack in the box” instead and well, I doubt I will eat there again. It was pretty much the same as Mcd except little more greasy, I ordered a ultimate cheese burger and yea…there was a lot of cheese, meat I’m not so sure about,

 

St Louis – Lacledes Landing

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Spent the day downtown St Louis, wandering around with no goal in the blocks around the old harbor around Mississippi river. With a shining sun it couldn’t be much better but even if we been here for some weeks now I still cant remember that the food portions are huge in this country. Found a nice Italian restaurant and we ordered some garlic bread and lasagna, well the garlic bread was a whole wheat bread and the lasagna was the size…for a family. Really good and tasty but come on, who can eat all this?!? I do however love the free refill culture, I think I had 4 or 5 refills of ice tea to my food but only paid for 1 glass, love it!

Yesterday evening we spent in Laclede’s Landing, found a lot of different bars but all of them were closed or empty of people so instead we took an early night. Feels kind a good to have a break and just relax and sleep instead of all the partying. Tonight however we aim for a new all night out, in a new area!

We never went up in the Gateway arch, the queue was to long and we were never really into it but its huge and the view from the top must be amazing!

 

Arrived in Chicago

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The new area in St Louis wasn’t much better, more bars but still no people so we headed back to our hotel, packed our car and left. Now we arrived in Chicago and by that our road trip is officially over. We will however stay here for a couple of days before we head back to Europe and a normal life in Sweden. The trip between St Louis and Chicago went really fast and without any problems or incidents. We saw a lot of warning sign for speed cameras but we never saw a single camera and in Illinois they seem to have pretty hard punishment if you don’t behave in traffic. “Hit a worker and get $10 000 fine and 14 yeas in jail” was a common sign along the road, we never saw any workers though so we couldn’t test if its true.

Right after we checked in at our hotel, which is the most fanciest hotel on this trip we went out to find something to eat. Pretty close to the hotel we found a Japanese restaurant and wow, so good! With our own little barbeque on the table we ordered in a lot of different meat and then grilled it our self. Once again we ate to much and can hardly move right now but it was so good. I guess we just have to relax an hour or two before we head out to see the town, one thing is sure though, its cold here so I will be prepared for the Swedish summer then I get back home.

Chicago – River north

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Woke up in decent time so we headed out to see if we could learn to navigate in this city. It became a quite long walk and still we only been in the area River North which is the area we live in. After been walking around among all the high rising houses we found Millennium park, a big green area next to Lake Michigan. It was really nice to get into the sun and get rid of the concrete for a while. Speaking about the sun, I still think its cold here and I have obvious got used to warmer climate for now  its t-shirt, hoodie and a jacket to wear not to freeze. To be honest, I’m thinking of buying myself a winter hat too cause I’m freezing my head off.

After the park we followed the shore and found a nice marina, in true American style the boats were not small and we also found Chicago’s biggest tourist trap, navy pier. Its like a classic pier which you can find everywhere with some beer tents, a Ferris wheel and so on. It might be nice to sit here during a warm summer day but now, not so much. We got a really nice view over the city skyline though and it was really cool so see how the city just continues until the horizon make it impossible to see anymore.

 

Chicago – All in

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Yesterday we went pretty much all in, it wasn’t planned and our budget is now officially screwed but it was totally worth it. We carefully started at a steak house, I mean you cant visit US without having a really nice steak and once we found a place that looked good we realized that this will be expensive but whatever, we just going to eat. As a starter we ordered some garlic marinated snail since Anton never tried this before and I never seen so big snails before, they must been feed on growing hormones. Second starter was a blue cheese salad and after that I was kind a finished but then our main course arrived, a big steak! Now (with googles help) I know we ordered a 360g steak and it was perfectly cooked. Not a single of garbage (read potatoes) on the side, just an awesome steak and a bourbon sauce which makes me drool just thinking about it. A couple of beer to this and we succeeded to eat everything which even impressed the waitress and we got some inside information where to go if we want to party.

A piano bar later, some ordinary bars where we met a lot of people who finally didn’t thought we were Germans (they thought we were French) and a limo ride later we ended up at Spy bar. A really nice club with really good music and a lot of people dancing all over the place made it the perfect end of a perfect night. Somewhere around 4 we staggered home and today we haven’t done anything, for the first time on this trip we got a hangover from hell.

Time to go home

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The last night and the last dollar has been spent and its only a long and boring flight back to Sweden that is left. To summarize it I have seen ocean, mountains, desert and plains, I’ve seen trailer parks and rotten houses to 5-star hotels and enormous villas. I thought I would see more fat people than what I actually have seen, I never thought that the country side would be so hillbilly and I was absolute sure that the Texas cowboy was only a tale but I admit, I was wrong.

Our road trip has taken us 420 miles through 7 or 8 different states, from a sunny California to a right now, rainy Illinois. Next time I sure need to finish the last miles and see what the east coast has to offer.

 

Summary of the road trip

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Half way home I’m now sitting in Warsaw and waiting on the next flight which will bring me home, the airport is actually really nice with human prices and a free Wi-Fi so waiting here for a couple of ours wont be a problem.

Trying to summarize the whole trip a little bit more is hard, I’ve seen ocean and deserts, huge plain fields and cow factories together with small villages and huge cities. My preconceptions about the US seems to both be true and false, I haven’t seen all that many really fat people that I thought I would but the rednecks I met were really more redneck than I even can imaging. The network of roads are in most case in mint condition while their infrastructure (power/phone lines) looks like what I saw in India. I’ve spent time on luxury hotels and on classic motels which I don’t want to remember, the trailer parks and the resident areas are overall what I thought it would look like. The people are really friendly and its maybe that which surprise me the most, I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t want to help me, who have been rude or anything. The upper limit of money to spent is non-existent but if you want you can live really cheap here but I think its a must to rent a car, the whole country is built around you having a car.

I don’t think anyone has guessed right on where I’m from, the most common guess is German  or England and right now everybody thinks I’m Polish but as soon as I mention Sweden everybody gets extra polite. The only bad thing I can say it that we didn’t had enough time, I’m not sure if I would survive many more days with our lifestyle though but I guess that means I have to come back cause I still have the east side and dirty south to visit.

Off we go

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Soon it’s time to leave for my next road trip. The ferry leaves at 21.00 for Poland and I’m listening to “Timbuktu – Jag drar” at the highest volume at the same time as I’m trying to figure out what to bring. It is kind a hard to know what to bring when you don’t know what to expect but that’s the lovely part too, no plans, no must do, no destination, instead we just jump in the car and drive.

We do however have some plans, the ferry to Poland and or first night at a hotel in Vilnius is booked and if I’m not wrong it will be a nice cozy budget hotel in the old city and as long as we keep left in Poland, it will be easy to find our way to Vilnius.

We forgot to turn left

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Our plan was to keep left and in that way get into Lithuania as soon as possible and then drive to Vilnius but we kind a forgot that and suddenly we were in Warzaw. A small detour on 30 miles from the expected tour but we got to see Poland instead and even if some of the roads are a bit small, windy and needs new asphalt most of their roads are in mint condition, the polish driving style..that’s a complete other story though!

A broken down truck caused a long delay before we were allowed to drive on the ferry and once we took off we realized that even if we are still in the archipelago the waves are kind a big and its rolling…this will be an interesting trip. Lucky for us the beer was really cheap and if you drink a few you will get your body to roll in the same rate as the boat. To bad not the rest of the people on the boat understood this and we were pretty much alone both in the restaurant, nightclub and arcade hall.

Now we will fire up the Jacuzzi, open a bottle of wine and celebrate that we arrived to Vilnius, our budget hotel rocks!

First impression of Vilnius

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After spent one day in Vilnius I’m still not sure what to think about it. The roads to get here were really nice but the houses along the roads is not the same. Maybe half of the houses along the road are abandoned or should be tear downed because of lack of maintenance and the other half is newly built and really nice. Inside the city its really nice though even if they of course have some rougher neighborhoods (like where our hotel is). It looks like the project with big, concrete houses with wood balconies which are all rotten. Walking into the city center it’s really nice though, most is renovated and its clean and nice. The whole city center feels like Stockholms Old city with the exception that everything is cheap and the people are friendly.

You can however see the traces from the finance crises. In a 4 floors shopping mall more than half was empty but I found a store that sold old soviet things. Don’t get supprised if I come home in a uniform, a gasmask or with a huge kick as bomb.

The day were spent just walking round with several stops, sitting in the sun and drinking a beer or drink. Once back to the hotel we jumped into the Jacuzzi before its time to head out again, this time to find some food before we try Vilnius nightlife.

Still alive

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We have been walking up and down, forward and backward and of course you get thirsty and have to take a short stop for some refreshments.  We started kind a early with a dinner and I tried some sort of Lithuanian stew, I’m not a big fan of either potatoes or cabbage but this was really nice and perfect to eat before a long night out drinking. It ended up with we found a place called “Gringo”, we had a lot of beers and met a lot of different people. A good night for sure and extra fun for me when they refused to believe that I was the older one, first after they verified my driving licence they agreed that I’m older than Sandra and by some reason I doubt that she enjoyed it as much as I did.

A little bit tired after yesterday we started the day with a hang over breakfast. 2 pizzas later, 3 soda. Everything for only 60 Swedish kronor (€7), that’s cheap but as google say “you did not come to Vilnius for its shopping”. Instead we took a walk and found an awesome fort, nice view over the city and a small market just outside where I found a big soviet military winter hat. I had a craving but no, I didn’t bought it!

Now we are back at the hotel and trying to decide where to go tomorrow, we thinking about Klaipeda but haven’t really decided, any ideas?

 

Labas Palanga

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Our idea of going to Klaipeda was never realized, instead we went to Palanga. Palanga is  just a few miles from Klaipeda and while Klaipeda is suppose to be an city with industries and everything this is more of just an resort. We haven’t had time to look into it to much but it looks really neat with like on street with a lot of restaurants and bars and clubs and the beach looked just marvelous even if its to windy to go for a swim today.

To get here was no problem at all and after we started the days with pancakes we headed out on the highway and boom, we were here. This hotel does not have a Jacuzzi beside the bed but the room is huge,  I think the hotel is recently built, we got a minibar and a pool somewhere. The city is kind a  small and I would say a typical summer resort, everything is built around tourism and the beach and on the main street there is a amusement park and I guess everything just close down during the winter.

 

More of Palanga

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Palanga is the shit, its all an classic summer resort just like I sad but they atmosphere, the beach, the pier and all the activities that are happening all around just make it crazy, The whole place is just built for tourists and even if you can feel that winter is coming (its getting cold during night) its really awesome to be here. Both me and Sandra has starting to get a cold  bu who cares for we live king king and queen here, eating a lot of good food, drinking nice drinks and clubbing all night long. If you are in the neighborhood I can really recommend “Klub Exit”, 3 floors with a small bar on the middle floor together with a huge dancing floor, with nice house music and smoke machines, confetti bombs and laser shows I only seen on TV before.

Just booked a new hotel in Riga so lets go there, we couldn’t find the address on the GPS but how hard can it be?

Welcome to Riga

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Even if we didn’t found the address on the GPS it was really easy to find our way but suddenly we arrived to what looked like an abandoned house over the road. A bit confused at the beginning we soon realized that this was an old toll house from the old times and then we were in Latvia. The road conditions went from really good to really bad just as we crossed the border and you can really see that this is a much poorer country.

Riga is the biggest city we been to so far on this trip and you really see and feel it, a completely different atmosphere, people are more stressed, always people on the streets and its more expensive here, not Sweden expensive but still. We arrived pretty early so after an quick shower we headed out and and once we started with 1.5l Sangria as a pre-drink, I think we all know where it ended. Later we moved on to a sky bar and took a bottle of wine while having a blasting view over the city. While the sun was setting we headed into the night life of Riga.

Well, the nightlife here sucks, we had some weird russian drinks, we went to a club with really lousy gogo-dancers (good looking but they couldn’t dance) and everybody we ask just keep telling us “You should go to Palanga”

Riga – Part two

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A bit tired after all partying and clubbing we spent this day in relax mode. A cup of coffee here, some water there, attempted to do shopping but only found trash but we did find a really cool market hall. Former a place for zeppelins was rebuilt to a huge indoor market where you could find anything you wanted, from vegetables and fruit to meat and fish. It was packed with people but you never were really afraid of pickpockets and except that mix a hangover with the stench of fish it was awesome. However the language is a problem, its not any problem at the hotel or at the restaurants but as soon as you start to talk to people you realize which low level of English they have and on the market where most of the people were older, English was non existent. I don’t think its an bad idea to learn a few phrases or at least words in Russian or Latvian before next trip here.

Just a few pictures from today, the last pictures are our hotel. As you can see it feels kind a harsh and you can really tell that its a poor country but the streets are so clean, no garbage on the street and not a lot of graffiti on the walls and the contrast are huge between the newly built and the old.

Tallin

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We loaded the car, charged the battery on our mp3 player and headed for the border to Estonia and our hotel in Tallin. This time we didn’t saved any money and booked a room on a 4-star hotel, we guesses it would be pretty nice and yes, it is. Driving here were not any problem except at one place, we arrived to a roadwork and a huge blue sign with an white arrow showed us that we should drive to the left, into the oncoming traffic side and Sandra, she turns right
Me: Why did you turn right when the sign said turn left?
Sandra: I’m just following the car ahead of us, can he so can I
Me: Ok, but that’s a truck who belongs to the roadwork?
Sandra: Oh…yea…well I didn’t thought of that

It was a bit bumby ride but not any real problems and shortly after that we changed driver. My contribution was a few laps in the roundabout instead, I’m might be able to blame the GPS but to be honest, I had no idea where to leave.

Our hotel room is really nice and we got a bar in the lobby, one on 5th floor and one in the pool. Oh yea, the pool area contain three Jacuzzis, an “adventure swimming pool” with a waterfall and stuff like that and 7-8 different saunas, massage and all what you can think of. Do we like it here, heck yea!

 

Summary of the baltic

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Tallinn was really nice even if its the most popular Swedish tourist resort of those we visited, and you see it. Both that the prices are higher here than anywhere else but also that you can find menus in bot English and Swedish and that you hear people speak Swedish all the time. I did however like it anyway but if I only can recommend one of all the cities I think Tallinn will be the last one. Vilnius is much smaller but more genuine and not that much tourists, Tallinn is both a much bigger city and a have a lot of tourism while Riga is somewhere between those two (both in distance and in size).

The roads are in really good condition and its easy to drive here, except for the polish suicide drivers the traffic is quite calm, they are supposed to have road tolls but we never saw any. If you only look out for the tram while driving in the cities you will not have any problem at all. Everything is cheap here and its your budget which sets the limit, if you want to can more or less live for a penny a day or you can go crazy and live a life in luxury for a small amount of cash. English works really good as language but it will be a problem when you try to speak to the older population or leave the main roads.

 

Lets get ready for the train ride of my life

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So I’m getting ready this summers big adventure and I would say it will be the train ride of my life. From Moscow to Beijing by train. Right now I’m having a cup of coffee and tries to figure out what I have packed in my luggage and what I really need. I mean, I will be traveling for about five weeks, going through seven timezones. According to our little plan we will live in everything from tent in the wilderness to hotels in mega cities and since we don’t have any base camp we have to bring everything with us, all the time. If I got everything I need? No idea but at least I’m pleased with the size/weight of my backpack.

Regarding our plan its just as simple as genius:
Step one: Go all in in and dry Moscow of vodka. Once the city are in ruins lets jump on the train heading east.
Step two: Hold a low profile on the train and investigate Siberia, no matter how beautiful it will be I don’t wanna be stuck in a gulag camp for the rest of my life.
Step three: What is Mongolia? Well I heard that its a country built on nomads with a lot of horses but thats it, lets find out what its really is.
Step four: China is close, China is huge and they have pandas. We must see pandas, end of story!

A long time ago I read that simple plans are the best, that would mean that our plan is the best!

Arrived in Moscow

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After a long and boring train ride to Copenhagen we finally arrived to the airport, for some reason our train actually arrived to the airport according to the time schedule which is not that common in Sweden so we had a lot of time to spend on the airport. Well, thats not really a problem and a couple of beers later we boarded the plane and headed for Moscow. It was me and Anton and 30 Chinese people so we started to think are we really in the right plane but I guess its the cheapest way to fly to Asia.

The food on the Aeroflot plane was the worst thing I ever had, a dry sandwich, a tiny slice of cheese and a huge slice of ham but luckily for us we landed in Moscow right after this wonderful “lunch”. The security control in Moscow was rigorous, the only time my passport been examined with a magnifier, the tore the passport and really looked through both the passport and visa extremely carefully before we were welcome to Russia together with a piece of paper which I have no idea what to do with.
We decided to grab a taxi to our hotel instead of fighting or way through the metro system. I think the metro would be faster because we stay at a hotel on the other side of Moscow but it was quite fun to see the suburbs, the crazy highway traffic and if you think that the Swedish suburbs are boring, welcome to see this! Moscow is the biggest city in Europe and the complexes and houses are huge. The condition of the houses are very different, some a newly built, some looks like they are falling apart any time, unfortunately I didn’t took any photos because I was busy just to try to survive our taxi trip.

Our hotel is descent, I mean for €25 a night its really nice but its located little bit off, its filled with the same Chinese people as from our plane and the hotel is former apartment houses which has been built together to form a hotel, it looks kind a special but for us it will be perfect. Now we will head out and find us some diner and vodka!

Moscow – Part two

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The language would be a challenge that much did we know but that it would be hard to even navigate around in Moscow, that we wasn’t prepared for. To be honest, its freaking impossible to know which station you should jump of the metro at, which line you should take or which exit you should aim for. Yesterday we took the wrong exit and it took us nearly one hour to find our way back again. Lucky for us it was in the middle of the night and only twenty degrees outside cause during they days its really hot here and you need to drink a lot 🙂

Anyway, there a lot of rumors about how fancy the metro stations are but I don’t know. Sure some of them are really nice but most of em just contains fake wood and marble its the shit, however they should get creds for how big and well working it is. Sometimes it feels like you really never have to go up surface and there are tunnels everywhere.

We spent the day around the red square and Kremlin, since its so hot outside we spent plenty of time making sure that our liquid level are in shape, just according to our plan 🙂

 

All in at Moscow

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Our plan was to go all in in Moscow and dry it of vodka and yesterday we aimed for just that but I confess, we failed with our mission but one thing at the time.

Around midnight we headed downtown, of course well dressed this shirts and long pants and we almost died of head since it was so warm outside. Anyway we find a nice restaurant for some late dinner and then we started to walk bar by bar until we found some clubs. a really short  conclusion is that you more or less is screwed if you don’t speak Russian, you are welcome to the bars and clubs but you can barely speak to anyone, we did however manage with some sign language, pointing at images but it kind a sucks then you cant speak to the people.

We did however found some clubs and we partying as hard as we could but it was still nothing compared to the Russians, they can party! Early morning and we decide its time to get back home we realize that the metro is closed and we have no idea where we are or where our hotel is, we have only memorized the metro station name. No panic though so we started to walk around and when we found Kremlin we at least knew where we were and we found a park bench to lay down and rest for an hour until the metro open again. Now after I looks at the maps I know we slept in the Alexander Garden park and well, it worked fine even if there was plenty of people walking around and at 7 in the morning we shared the metro with people going to their work while we were going to our hostel to get some sleep.

Tomorrow we will jump on the train towards Irkutsk and who knows when we get WIFI again but more updates will follow, the evening here will be calm because it feels like a train hit me yesterday.

Towards Irkutsk

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With plenty of time we checked out from the hotel and started to our journey towards the railway station. Since we cant read the signs (we really should have learned the Cyrillic alphabet before this trip) we counted stations while going with the metro and it worked like a charm. At the railway stations we started to walk around randomly to try to find our train and normally you always see a lot of bums, homeless people around places like this but not here. Actually thats for the whole Moscow, no bums, no homeless people  but instead police officers and soldiers everywhere. At the station we found the information center and they helped us find our train, in Russian of course but we starts to get the hang of sign language now so that was not a problem. While leaving the station we see that to enter you have to go through a security checkpoint including x-raying your luggage, well since we took a side entrance where the guards having a smoking break we never had to do that, well done Moscow!

We found our train to Irkutsk or wherever its going and tries to jump on it but no no, before you can actually board the train you have to show em your passport and your ticket. This is really nice since you know you jump on the right train and at the right wagon, no worries that you jump on the first wagon and then have to walk inside the whole train to the last wagon and of course, you are 100% sure that you are on the right train!

The standard of the train is descent and what i expected, the beds are hard like rocks, the furnishing is plastic wood imitation and our lamps looks like they are imported directly from the 80’s. We live in a four bed compartment and therefore share it with two older Russian ladies. Of course they only speak Russians so we have a slightly limited communication but they seems nice and the sign language also works here. Each wagon on the train has its own wooden fire kettle so you can always get some hot water for tea or noodles or want to make some freeze dried food. Our Russian ladies had brought themselves plenty of food though and you should see it, they were taking up the whole compartment with food and I cant help to think if they have anything else in their luggage than food.
Each wagon also have a small kiosk selling candy, tea and other small stuff. Me and Anton, we are going to the restaurant wagon instead though and get some proper food which actually are really good. The food is properly made here and besides I have some issues with the Russian breakfast (cabbage, cabbage in all forms) its really nice and who can complains when you get salmon, 6 beers and and 4 shots of vodka for €25.

Where are we?

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During the first night on the train it was warm like a sauna in our compartment, tonight it was the opposite and I could almost see frost in my beard. I have no idea how high we climbed during passing the Ural mountains or what happen but it was could, now we passed the mountains and the temperature is back to normal and outside the window the Siberian countryside slowly passing by,

The tempo here on the train is much like the train itself, there is plenty of room for self reflection, thoughts. Anton spends most of the time sleeping but he woke up really quickly once we decided that we westerners should go to the restaurant wagon for a beer together. In our wagon we have a couple from Holland, one guy from Italy and in the next wagon we fond a couple from Ireland and another group from Italy so suddenly we were a pretty big group of people, ordering beer and vodka like there is no tomorrow. We did impress some of the people with our vodka drinking and we made people laugh when we made the dutch girl try some Swedish snus and her face turned from white to green.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere the train stopped and we jumped of to get some local food. We bought some huge Russian pasty which was really, really good and when we tried to ask whats the filling was the old women put her hands to the head to look like a cow and said a loudly “Mooooh”. It might be the beers but we instantly started to laugh and that was for sure a morale booster. Once the train started to move again the train was filled with people trying to sell stuff to you, mostly junk and nothing really interesting but I guess they make some money of it and to be honest, everything new is nice but we decided to continue to hang our with our new friends and drink some more Russian vodka until a female from the train staff with a bigger mustache than any of us has yelled at us because we were to loud.

 

Arrived in Irkutsk

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The days start to melt together and I have serious problem to say what happen today or yesterday, what time or even date it is. On the train we are living in or own world, our own twilight zone completely disconnect from the rest of the world while we slowly traveling through the Siberian wasteland. We westerns are hanging out and discuss everything form serious subjects like IRA or Berlusconi to more easy subjects like how crazy Russians really are or which vodka or beer is best.

During the evenings its been pretty much party all the time and yesterday we all went crazy, a gang of Russians hit the bottle pretty hard and we joined em. After a while we even got the staff on the train with us and we were a real nice mix of westerners, Russians and staff all drinking and having fun. One of the Russian guys even borrowed a apron from the staff and freelanced to serve us drinks, it was a blast until the police arrived and more or less gave us a direct order to go to bed. I guess this was for the best because I bet we would have missed our stop if we continued partying like that all night. We did not miss our stop and early morning we jumped of the train in Irkutsk where we are now.Minor problem to check in at the hotel since they couldn’t find our reservation first and the language makes it ever more difficult but we manage to solve it and now we are relaxing at the hotel. After 4 days non-stop on  a train I’m actually seasick now, it feels like my body has tuned in that its supposed to move and swing all the time and now when it doesn’t do it my body still compensate for it which make me seasick. Hopefully it will go over pretty soon case its not very nice feeling,

 

First day in Irkutsk

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Today has been a really calm day with not a lot of action because a couple of reasons:
1. We are jet lagged, I’m not sure you can be jet lagged by a train going 60km/h but it feels like jetlagged at least
2. We have caught some sort of Russian super virus which kicks both the bird flue, swine influenza and AID, together! The result is that it feels like my throat is growing together and you spit slime that corrodes a hole in the street.
3. We have a slightly small need of taking a sober day and just relax and let our bodies heal from the last days of partying.

Anyway, we took a small walk in the city and the first impression is that we might have made a bad decision on how long time we will stay here in Irkutsk. In a afternoon we pretty much did the city center and for being a city with a population of 600 000 it feels kind a small. Anyway, we haven’t seen everything yet and in worst case we will do like all other tourist, head out to Lake Baikal, our first mission is to find a pharmacy and cure this virus…

Pharmacy in Irkutsk

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Has been a really bad night here in Irkutsk and even if I thought that it was impossible to get worse beds than on the train I miss em and to make it even worse we had a gang war outside our hotel all night between rival dogs. Finally I fell a sleep and then I woke up I felt a little better than yesterday at least. Anton was worse though so we decided to head out and find a pharmacy.

To buy medicine in a new country is always special and to spice it up they don’t speak English here and all labels are written with Cyrillic alphabet. They clerk were very helpful though and after some sign language we got a bunch of colorful pills. I have no idea what we bought but we mix them with some classic pills from back home it seems to work, headache disappear and it feels like you can talk again and once it start to feel bad again its just to load up another hand of colorful pills.

We spent the day downtown along the river and we got our first came contact, a reindeer and a shit loads of horses. I don’t know if there was something special today but it was like a classic city festival with all kind of different activities. Then big difference compared to Swedish city festivals? No drunks, no red necks and way more polices here. Its also a big drifting event a bit further away that our Russian friends are attending too but neither me or Anton had the energy or felt that it would be fun to watch a car race today so instead we just chilled and enjoyed life along the water.

 

 

 

 

Last day in Irkutsk

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Last day in Irkutsk and we spent in in the race track. We woke up well rested and surprisingly felt really good we headed downtown for some breakfast. While eating breakfast I got a text from the italian guys we met on the train and they were heading for the drifting event so we decided to join them. Its a nice sunny day so why not see some drifting in real life with some good friends. While we were standing in queue to buy tickets for the event the Russian we partied with on the train by. They went to Irkutsk just for this event and so happy to see us and they promised to fix us in for free if we just waited a minute. A minute later we suddenly had an ID batch saying that we were a part of their crew and before we knew it we were at the drivers meeting before the race. Everything was of course in Russian and me and Anton did not understand anything but it was really nice to walk around among all the cars. I think i too hundreds of photos but as a teaser you can see a short film clip instead:
[jwplayer mediaid=”7737″]

The afternoon and evening was spent together with the Italians, a nice and funny surprise was that the Irish couple came by too. It feels a bit sad that we wont see them again during this trip but hopefully we will meet up the Italians once we reach Beijing. All together it was an early evening, Italians left at 22 and me and Antons train are leaving tomorrow morning at 5.

After a few days here in Irkutsk it actually feels nice to get moving again. Sure the city has around 600 000 citizens and everything is crazy cheap but I start to get bored and every Russian guy we met who actually speak English ask us the same question: What a fuck are you doing here?

Tomorrow we will go to UlaanBataar and directly from the train we will go camping. In other words it will be radio silence from me for a couple of days but I think you will survive and I will update again once I get Internet connection again

Hello Mongolia

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After just a couple of hours sleep it was time to get the bags and take a nightly walk through Irkutsk and to the train station and jump on the train toward Mongolia and Ulanbaator, It might not been our brightest idea to walk alone, as two tourist with all our luggage through the city in the middle of the night but we had no problem what so ever and to be honest, I never felt unsafe here in Russia. On our way to the train station we stopped at a 24/7 open cafe and bought some Russian pasty and while we stood outside and munching our a cop car arrived with the same goal. From this tiny Renault 19 four huge police officers jump out, together with Kalashnikov’s of course. I have no idea how that tony car could fit em all and its quite a difference compared to Sweden there they cops has an huge Volvo for themselves.

The same procedure again to board the train with showing your tickets and passport which is really nice and easy, unfortunately this train had lower standard and you could not open any windows. It hot, stuffy and pretty shitty on the train which may be explained that the train has been running non-stop from Moscow, 6500km away. This time we had a Scandinavian compartment, me and Anton together with two danish guys. Nice but we are bored and the heat make us easily annoyed about more or less everything, it will be nice to arrive to Ulanbaator.

We passed lake Baikal during the night so I couldn’t shoot any picture of it and after that the landscape has opened up with big, wide rivers. If it wasn’t for the pointy mountains you could think we were taking a train ride through the Swedish mountains, The few houses we seen remind of mountain cabins but here its the their permanent residence.I haven’t seen any arable and the few animals we see if groups of 4-5 cows.

The biggest challenge was to cross the border though. I you think that this should be an easy process since the train is passing here on daily basis you thought wrong. First they collected all the passports on the train, then they  passed them over to the soldiers who were checking that you were allowed to leave, had visa and everything. At the same time another group of soldiers boarded the train with dogs  and they really tore downed the whole train is their search for contraband. Once they finally has checked the whole train (which is a long, long train) the soldiers board the train and starts to hand over the passports, of course verifying that its you on your passport. About three hours later we were finally allowed to pass the boarder and we roll away, for about 20km and then the whole process starts over again, this time with Mongolian soldiers and police officers.

Camping in Mongolia – part 1

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We arrived to Ulanbaator and just as we planned we had a driver waiting for us, time to go camping!

According to the pre-information we got we knew it should take around 3 hours to drive to our camp where the first hour would be on tarmac roads and from that, “more exciting roads”. I would say that the tarmac road was exciting and lasted for around 30 minutes, once we came outside of the city no more tarmac but way more adrenalin and what a view. I mean I have been riding downhill tracks on my bike or drove motocross on tracks which were in better conditions than the roads we drove today. Besides driving on cattle tracks we drove on the Mongolian steppe, through mountain passes and yes, over mountains.

Once we arrived at the camp we saw that our camps is five our six gers and the view from here is amazing. You can see high mountains, deep valleys, rivers and untouched nature. Absolutely breathtaking and all the silence, oh my god! The only things that we hear is our own loudly laughs when we miscalculated how warm it will be inside the tent once we light up the fire (wehave around 60C right now) or when we realize that that asian girl is not an escort girl, shes a guide for a big Swedish group.

Everybody except me and Anton has so much gears, it feels like they emptied a outdoor store and everybody is walking around like a commercial somewhere in the wilderness, well except me and Anton. We have regulare jeans, a shirt, sneakers and a big bag of beer with us. The look they gave us is priceless when we open the first bottle of beer and decided to climb the closest peak. That wasn’t any problem and we both climbed to the top and got down again to base camp and after that we were blacklisted by the other swedes. I really don’t care since I don’t travel around the world to meet other swedes anyway.

Camping in Mongolia – part two

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Woke up in the middle of the night that finally the heat started to leave the tent and I could use the blanket, feels good to not have to sleep in a sauna anymore and a few hours later we woke up and got the best breakfast on the whole trip. Even if we are in the middle of nowhere we gets some toast (over open fire so it has that lovely smoke taste), juice, tea, pancakes and you name it, I just love it!

The mission for today was to see Mongolia Genghis Khan style, in other words just get ready and mount the horse and start horseback riding. The horses are much smaller than the horses you see in Sweden but don’t get fooled, they are fast and used to run in the mountains, My horse was probably on speed so if I didn’t actively hold him back he started to run while Antons horse was more…hungry and took any opportunity he had to eat. Our guide solved this issue by simple create a horsewhip from an old tree and after he learned us the Mongolian word for speed up we could suddenly talk to our horses. To bad we didn’t learn the word to stop or slow down because the horse didn’t care how much you tried to hold him back, luckily we were riding in mountains and I simple turned the horse riding uphill to slow him down. A few hours in you started to get a feeling for it and you could really enjoy the views and for a second or two you felt like Genghis Kahn.

After our horseback riding we decided to go river rafting, a long hike later and we are finally gently following the stream. It was nice and even if I wished for some more action it was really nice to follow the stream, see the nature and just enjoy the silence . When the sun started to set our guides started to sing a Mongolian song which made the whole scenery really picturesquely.

The other Swedish gang left today so now its only us, one British, one American and one German here, it feels good and the atmosphere is much better. The locals we kind a havent seen many and in this camp there is only one who speaks English, she is nice thought so I assume they all are.

Ulaanbaatar

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After our camping trip it was time to visit Ulaanbaatar and since we been on the road for a while now we decided to go for a little nicer hotel so we could wash our clothes and really live central and central it was. Our closest neighbors was a coupe of embassies and we had somewhere around five minute walk to Sükbaatar square which must be counted as city center but nicer hotel? Well I’m not sure about that. I woke up this morning that Anton had to take a leak an once he opened the door to our bathroom the whole room was filled with water. Somehow the sink broke during the night and slowly filled the bathroom floor with water, gradient or floor drain is of course missing so even if it didn’t leaked much from the sink it slowly filled our bathroom with water. Lucky for us we had no stuff in the bathroom and we got upgraded to a suite instead so we don’t complain and besides that, we got all newly washed clothes now, whoho!

Ulaanbaatar is a quite boring city though, sure there is people and classic city life, even more than in Irkutsk but I got a weird feeling about the city. In one way it feels like a big city since there is people and they are building everywhere but at the same time all bars and restaurants are closing down at midnight which makes it feels like a small city. The city is also very young and got no real history or tourist attractions. well they have a few museums and plenty of temples but overall it feels like two days is more than enough here.

Mongolia is a country I really recommend to visit but don’t stay here in Ulaanbaatar, go out in the wilderness instead, live in gers, go horseback riding, hiking and enjoy the silence and the nature. Ulaanbaatar is worth a visit but you don’t need more than a day or two here so you can say, checked!

Welcome to China

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We decided to spend our last night in Mongolia partying and checking out the nightlife before we jump on the train towards Beijing. It may sound like a stupid idea because who wants to be hangover on the train but it actually was a really smart thing to do. First of all its really boring to go by train through the Mongolian desert. The nature look all the same and it gets really boring after a while.

We are now going by a Chinese train and this is really modern compared with the old Russian train. We have air condition, power outlet and even a TV in our compartment. The train is much more silent and overall more nice. It kind a felt bad in the beginning, like we were cheating but during on of the longer stops and I took a walk outside the train and almost died because of the heat I change my mind and now I’m really thankful for the air condition.

The border between Mongolia and China went actually really quick, well it took a couple of hours of course but the Chinese custom lady was the first one on this train trip who both was happy and friendly and could speak English with us (in official business) which a nice surprise. However China and Mongolia has different size of the tracks so while we were going through customs they changed the undercarriage on the whole train. This was the part which took forever and even if it was really interesting to see how they manage to do it for the first wagon, you get restless and while they are doing it the air condition/power is offline, the toilets are closed and you are not allowed to leave the train. I tried to shoot some photos of it but it was challenging to get a good one.

The scenery here in China was more or less the same as in Mongolia but now we actually see traces of agricultural and now and then you pass by houses and even trees.

Beijing

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Around two a clock we arrived to Beijing and the heat and street life was smack in your face. Sure I was expecting it to be hot and a lot of people but I still wasn’t prepared for this. Anyone our Transmongolian trip was over and we had finally reached China and Beijing. Our trip doesn’t end here but our first mission was to get some cash, unfortunately I have region restriction on my card and guess who forgot to unlock China. So instead of finding an ATM we headed out to find WIFI so I could unlock my card. We found a McDonalds and after some struggling with the registration to get access to the WIFI we were online and I could finally unlock my card, normally its not that hard to register but at this place all text were only in Chinese and it was not that easy to understand what to write where but we did it! Finding an ATM was easy, finding an ATM which accepts 4-digit pin code, not so simple, apparently China use 6 digit pin code as standard but after some trial and error and tried several banks we found Bank of China and we had money again!

Next question was how should we get to the hotel, in our quest for money we had walked towards our hotel so we were only three blocks away. It doesn’t look that far on the map and it could be nice with a walk after all that time on the train. Well, we never thought of our backpacks and the head, we did succeed to get to the hotel but it was sweaty and I really did enjoy a cold shower once we checked in.

We spent the evening walking around close to the hotel, visited a apple store to get a network card for my laptop (yes, huge apple store), small markets and when we found an arcade we knew directly how we would spend the evening. For €5 we played for over two hours, from pinball to some old Rambo game (which was really bad). We ended the evening on a Chinese pub drinking beer with some chinese guys and to all you who say that asian people cant handle alcohol? You never met these guys, the evening got kind a blurry before we went back to the hotel.

 

The Great wall of China

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We didnt slept many hours before our phone started to ring and our guide told us that she was waiting in the lobby and it was time to go exploring. Our first goal was the great wall of China which I think is a must do when you are in China for the first time. Im not sure what to say about it though, I mean after all its just a long, really long wall, its pretty high but what impress me the most is that its built without any modern machines and they where smart and used the nature so its built on top of ridges. It is for sure impressive but at the same time, its just a wall. I really recommend you to go here and see it but at the same time I have to quote Karl Pilkington from A idiot abroad; “I’ll decide if it’s great or not. It might end up being the ‘All Right Wall of China’ to me.” . However I can now check another of the wonders of the world but I cant shake the feeling that you go here, you look, and you leave.

Straight after we visited the wall we decided to head over to the tombs of Ming Dynasty. And once we got there we realized that it was closed for restoration, bummer! We saw glimpse of it it and we could walk the holy imperial road  but that was it. Maybe not what we expected but how interesting can a number of graves be?

Since we were living the tourist way of life we continued to visit a cloisonnes factory were we beside looking at how the actually made jade jewelery and art had an huge lunch containing 7 or 8 dishes. This was our first meal for the day and the hungover from yesterday finally started to disappear and we finally started to feel like humans again. The factory was pretty interesting but it was kind a tourist trap where they kind a forced you to buy stuff after you looked at they created then. The day continued with visiting the former Olympic village, the bird nest (the stadium) was actually more impressive than the great wall. We visited a proper tea house and we had some traditional Chinese massage. During the massage where were a “witch doctor” who looked into your hand and could tell your health. According to him we were dying and of course he had the cure for it if we had the dollars. Well, I knew it was a hard night yesterday but I don’t need expensive medicine to cure that, all I need is some more massage and some rest so we firmly said thank you but no thanks and run away.

Beijing Zoo

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Today we spent the day at Beijing Zoo and of course their aquarium, it took around six hours to walk through the whole park and yes, we saw some pandas! My feet hurts after all walking, Im thirsty like a camel and sweaty like you don’t wanna know so I wont write much more today more than it was an awesome day. We saw Tapir, ant eaters, bears, ostrich, pandas and a lot of other animals. By luck we timed in so we also saw a dolphin/sea lion show. Of course if you seen one of those shows you seen em all but still, sea lions are always fun to watch and beluga was new for me. What was really weird though was the music to the show, it was German, in German, about Germany but hey, the Chinese loved it and me and Anton, we just laughed about it.

 

Starting to eat weird stuff

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Yesterday we started on our “lets eat weird stuff today”, it wasn’t really planned but we met up our Italian friends from the train together with two Swiss girls, a Russian and a German and since they was looking forward to try some Chinese specialties we joined em and I have to say that barbecued octopus is really good, Scorpion tastes like bacon and those beetles, they just taste weird. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera  but there will be more opportunities for pictures.

After all these starters we decided to go to a real restaurant and we ordered so much food. We came to the restaurant pretty late and just after we ordered our waitress told us that they were closing now but we can of course stay as long as we want but they will close the kitchen and the staff will go home. It felt a bit weird but we were a pretty big group and had a really nice time so we kind a forgot that they were closed. Instead we were reveled in food (Beijing duck is hard to eat with chop sticks, but worth it once you get any into your mouth). A couple of hours later and we decided to move out and then we realize that the whole restaurant is pitch dark except our VIP-room and there is no staff there, well there was one sleeping behind the bar. he looked kind a happy when we decided to leave so he could close down for real and go home but I mean come on, that is service mind!Today we were supposed to go on a guided tour in the forbidden city and the summer palace but because of bad weather (rain, fog and smog) our guide advised us to change it to tomorrow instead. For us that sounded good so instead we walked over to the railway station and tried to by tickets for our next stop, Shanghai. That was not as easy as you could think though, all signs were in Chinese, they only talked Chinese and we were totally lost. Sometimes I do use my brain thought so I ran over to the nearby McDonald’s and used their WIFI again, this time I used google translate, entered the text that I want to buy two tickets to Shanghai with the date and clock and pressed translate to Chinese. I then ran back to the counter and showed my phone for the girl and success, we got our tickets! A neat trip over 13000km which will take around five hours. That means no more slow trans-siberian rail, instead we go for Chinese high speed train!

 

Q&A

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Many people write to me and ask more or less the same questions so my idea with this post is to answer them. The questions are just random so, no sorting order here

  • Did you get happy ending on the Chinese massage?
    No, this was a true massage institute with no intentions of anything except massage. There are however plenty of places which more or less wide open say that you will get happy ending and you cant walk down the street in Beijing without at least some people ask if you want some.
  • Hows the toilets?
    Russia use the same standard as western Europe and that includes the trans-Siberian train too. There was no paper on the train though so bring your own and you will flush everything just straight below the train which means that the toilets are closed while the train has stopped on a station. They were always decent clean though! On our camp in Ulaanbaatar we had a classic toilet chair over a hole, when its time to close the camp you just fill the whole with dirt and move your chair to the new place. In Mongolia and China we have seen all kind of toilets, from just a hole in the ground to regular toilets like the one we are used to.
  • Can you take a shower on the train?
    No, at least not in second or third class. Third class which is the cheapest means its more or less just a lot of beds in a wagon. You will more or less be sitting  and sleeping at your neighbor and this is the hard core class. In second class you have 4-bed compartments and if you want to sleep or relax you can easily close your door. Of course you might share your compartment with some other people but at least its a limited number of people. First class might have a shower but I doubt it and I assume its kind a luxury.  I went by second class and even if that means that I didn’t took a shower during those four days it took to get to Irkutskt it wasn’t that bad and everybody on the train were the same. I did enjoy the shower once I took it in Irkutsk though.
  • Hows the food?
    The food is far away from the “Swedish Chinese food” you can find and it taste really, really good. Every dish is like an explosion of flavors and its cheap. Normally you order a couple of different dishes to the table and then you eat from the one you like most. I must however give the advice to learn to eat with chopsticks before you go, Anton didn’t and he struggled before he learned how to eat. I must confess that neither the Russian cabbage or Chinese rice breakfast is a favorite but you can always eat something else.
  • Does English work??
    Sometimes but in Russia mostly no. In Mongolia and China many signs are in English and you can actually speak with people however there is many typos and you may not get answer on the question you asked. With some sign language and good will you will manage anyway.
  • Do you recommend the trip?
    Oh yea but do not expect an all inclusive trip. You will be confused, live like a bum and meet a lot of different people and different culture

Another day of being a tourist

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Today was another day of being a tourist and the camera was always ready to be shooting, almost like I was a Japanese tourist. Our goal for the day was to visit the forbidden city, the temple of heaven and finish the day with the summer palace which actually is so much more than just a palace. We were suppose to do this yesterday but the weather were really lousy and we did the right thing so wait another day because today we had blue sky, around 25 degrees with a warm breeze. Our guide picked us up at the hotel at 07.00 and I try to describe each place we visited.

The forbidden City:
A neat little area of almost 1x1km where the former empires lived. It was built somewhere around 1420 and it is a must to visit if you are in Beijing. We who were a bit lazy had ordered a English speaking guide and even if it was a bit confusing since we got all information in Chinese first but after 10 minutes our guide came and suddenly me and Anton had our own personal guide. It will be interesting to just walk around and look by yourself but I really recommend a guide. It was really interesting and when the guide started to talk about central heating and cooling using ice under the houses during the summer you really understand what kind of cavemen we norths really were at that time.

Temple of Heaven:
Straight after the forbidden city we went to the temple of heaven and this is actually the first time we saw a lot of other tourist. Of course we saw tourists at the great wall and in the forbidden city but here we actually saw western tourists and it felt almost weird to see someone who is not Asian. Anyway, the temple of heaven is a huge park where you will find the locals doing recreation like qi-gong, playing some sort f tennis and the old ones, they were sitting on park benches and playing chess and xiangi. The temple itself is gigantic and used to pray/sacrifice to the gods for good harvest and stuff like that. You could think that a tourist area like this should have signs in English and they kind a do, however Chinese people are not the best in English and neither me or Anton does still today understand if the sacrificed humans or not at this temple or if that just was a typo on the sign. I guess they are laughing at all western people who walk around this the Chinese sign for noodles as tattoos so I guess its even if we laugh everyday about some weird sign or T-shirt.

The summer palace:
Our last stop, well off course we stopped at a pearl factory/shop where they tried to sell us a lot of crap was the Summer palace. The summer palace is insane huge and beatuful park and house which one of the empires built for his mother. He actually built the lake on the pictures below together with houses and all kind of stuff. The area is even bigger than the forbidden city but then of course a majority of the area is the lake. We never took any boatride though, instead we took a walk along the lake and just enjoyed the beautiful area.

Arrived in Shanghai

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The Chinese people are good at many thing and I would say especially on building railway. Sweden has a lot to learn from here and in exchange we could learn the Chinese things we noticed that they suck at. Well, we haven’t found that much that they suck at though but their sausages taste like shit, their toilet paper is so thin that it just fall apart once you look at it and their parking culture for cars make the wild west remind you of a romantic comedy but the worst part is their beer, its more like water than beer but I can accept it all because the rest of China is really, really awesome!

We took a cab to the railway station and without any problem we found our way to our platform but here we noticed a big difference compared to Sweden. Instead of going to a platform it was more like flying where you check in and wait in a big room. Once its time to board you go down to the platform and there the train is already waiting for you. Really neat and with almost as many staff as travelers it was impossible to do anything wrong. The train itself had plenty of room, a TV, WIFI, a restaurant wagon and all you could ask for and even if we were traveling in 300km/h you didnt hear anything from the train or felt anything. To be honest it was more like flying than going by train with the exception that you could see the Chinese countryside through the window. 1300km was finished in 5 hours with a couple of stops at different stations, Sweden can really learn from this!

From Shanghai we haven’t explored that much yet, we checked in at the hotel and then left for something to eat. Lazy me let Anton order the food and this was the last time I let him do that. Everything was really good but he order pig’s feet with chili, cucumber with chili, beef with chili, everything had chili! Halfway through our meal the waitress came and gave us extra napkins because we were sweating like pigs and it came fire from our mouths and even if we ordered room tempered beer by mistake it was so good.

 

Public square and Nanjing road

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First day in Shanghai and we spent it like we were kings. We started the day to head over to the coffee shop just across the street with an real, western breakfast. No more rice to breakfast, instead we took fresh pressed juice, eggs, bacon, ham, pancakes and you name it. Once we put our order we had some communication problem with the waitress, she told us that something was out of stock but what? We had no idea and she pointed on the Chinese word in the menu. Well..we had no idea what it was but once the food arrived we realized that it was the chicken who was missing. We dont mind since we been eating rice and chicken for several years on this trip.

After this huge breakfast we took the metro to People square, a small square we thought but it was more like a huge center with a park, several shopping malls, a couple of museums and yea, you name it. We had no real plan for the day so we just strolled around and felt the atmosphere which is way more western here than in Beijing. We did however took a look at the Shanghai museum and checked out some ancient calligraphy, jade, clothes and coins from ancient China. It was like the first time we had signs in English so it we knew what we were looking at and it was really nice.

From People square you have access to Nanjing road which is one of Shanghais biggest shopping streets. Personally I almost went crazy because of all the beggars and “helpful people who wanted to show you the best shops” but it was indeed an experience that too and it was all worth it once we got down to “the bund” and saw the amazing skyline of Shanghai. There is many skyscrape in this city and one is more designed than another. We have to get up in one before we leave this city!

I took command and decided the dinner for today and that was maybe not the best. Somehow we found a true local Chinese place and the whole restaurant stop when we entered. We ordered food and it was good but I have no idea what it was we ate and every time a new guest entered they stopped and just looked at us, shocked. Overall a lot of people are staring at you and some even have asked if they can take a photo of us. It feels weird but I guess this is the feeling of being exotic but back to restaurants, I try to live after the feeling that if there is plenty of people at the restaurant, then you will get good food. You maybe dont know what kind of food but at least you dont get sick and so far my theory seems to work!

 

Welcome to the bund

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Both me and Anton starts to grow really tired of Chinese Internet connection. Ok, everything goes through their censorship filter but thats the way it is and we are not far behind with UK’s “no porn filter” and Sweden’s “Child-porn filter” but seriously, if you say you have WIFI make sure it fucking works and that it doesn’t demand a login page which is built for Internet explorer 3.0 and Win95. 

So, enough ranting and I can tell you about our day which we spent in the bund district, watching skyscrapers, boat and ferries along the river and just looking at people. We found a really nice restaurant, the waitress were looking like crazy among the booking list and with a big portion of luck we got a table for two. I guess this is a popular place and once we got the food I understand why. Scallop, dumplings, crab..you name it and we ate it and after a beer or maybe two we continued to the Oriental Pearl. We must go up in some skyscrape so why not aim for this one which is 438m high and gives you a nice view over the city.

On our way over to the Oriental Pearl we did however took a deep dive in a tourist trap, the maglev train under Yangtze river. The train ride was around 5 minutes long, filled with psychedelic colors and I don’t know what kind of drugs you should have taken before the ride we I missed them and this was just weird and expensive. Once we got up in the tower though we forgot all about it and we just enjoyed the view. From 350m you get a nice view over the city and you can see pretty far but still you only see the city continue in what it looks eternity. Unfortunately the Internet connection is really bad so I will only show you a small teaser of the photos I took today.

Yoyang district

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Our plans for the day was to visit Yuyuan garden, a nice park which was created during the Ming dynasty and after that move on and go shopping. Something is wrong in the world when its cheaper to buy new clothes instead of washing your old ones.

Yu garden was crazy big, according to Wikipedia its 5 acres and it contains several small path, big rocks, water and houses. The rocks are some special sort which has been moved here just to build the garden and in former China the rocks symbolized wealth and this garden is filled with rocks. My pictures below does not make it fair since it was really beautiful and calm to walk around in the garden and you cant believe that you are in central Shanghai when you walk here, enjoying the waterfalls or looking at the goldfishes.

Outside the park there is a huge market where you can buy pretty much anything. Unfortunately I think that 98% of what they sell is crap but it was really nice to just stroll around and look what they sell. All houses are built in classic style which is kind a cozy and when we found a toy store I become like a 7 year old again. I’m so jealous of kids growing up with stores like this now cause this one was packed with all kind of toys and I would probably emptied my wallet here if it wasn’t for that little thing that you need to bring it home in some way too.

The evening was spent with testing Shanghais nightlife, we met two British guys we made town with and our happiness when we found a bar who sold pizzas was unspeakable. It was not the best pizza or anything like that but to get a bite of a slice of pizza, with mozzarella cheese and pepperoni was so good, I guess since we only been eating Chinese food the last two weeks and the weeks before that we only ate different sort of cabbage. We continued into the night going from bar to bar and it was a blast, of course it would be since we are in a 20 million city but yea…it was amazing.

Anton almost lost his credit card though then he mistook a ASM from a ATM, we had no idea how to get the machine to eject his card but luckily for us our taxi driver came and saved us and more or less trashed the whole ASM-machine. Antons card looks like shit but he got it back and it still works so all good! Myself came home with a new shirt, I guess thats the thing with this trip, we swap clothes with each other when we drink.

Thoughts about traveling

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To be honest, today haven’t been our busiest day. It tear you down to travel or it might been our nightlife that tear us down, anyway I skip to say that we haven’t done anything except eating and sleeping today and instead I talk about traveling and travel companion.

Personally I am really impressed by the people we met who are traveling alone. I mean, English doesn’t really work on this trip and you have to put faith in peoples good will, sign language and good luck to make yourself understood. From time to time it is really nice to have someone to speak to in your native language, or at least someone to talk to and laugh together with in all the bizarre situations you end up in. At the same time, if you travel alone you will be forced more into meet new people which may good for us, reserved swedes.

The opposite, to travel in groups is often more easy. At least my experience is that you stay in the group and one or two in the group take the role as leader and the rest more or less just follow. It easier,you have always someone to talk to and someone who knows a little bit more which is nice but you don’t meet the same amount of local people and you kind a miss a part of the culture, I mean traveling is at least 50% of meeting new people.

This is of course generic speaking and I seen both introvert people who backpack alone and very social large groups but I still think that 2 persons is the perfect compromise, you are not alone but still you kind a need to push and meet new people but that doesn’t mean that me and Anton are the optimal traveling companions. We have been traveling together before and we share what we want to get out of the trip which makes it sound like the optimal companion but we do have one problem. We never say no and by some reason we excites each other and push the other to do things that sometimes may not be the smartest. I don’t think we really think about it and because of it we meet a lot of fun people and that we done a lot of stupid stuff which always ended up with a big laugh the day after and the question, what did we think there? Maybe we should have been three on this trip, one more who cold hold us back a little but no matter if we are going to a Chinese hard labor, our downfall or just have the vacation of our lives we have just as huge as long smiles on our faces, this trips is the shit!

 

Welcome to Happy valley

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Inspired by the toy store yesterday Anton and me decided to time travel back until we were 7 and the best thing you could do was to visit a theme park. A brief look at the metro map and we were on our way to Happy Valley, Chinas equivalent to Six Flags.

We started in the water area and took one water slide after another and suddenly we ran into the British guys we met a couple of days ago and like that we were 5 instead of just two. It may sound weird that in a 20 million city we ran into them but trust me, non asians stick out in this place and we kind a got the idea from them to go here, we had no idea that we would go here the same day though. Anyway the themepark was quite good with fun water slides, not so much action but nice and family friendly and it was really nice to just take a swim in the sunny weather. Some of the slides were really good though, especially one where you were sitting on a inflatable ring och going down the slide which were really steep and then you went up on almost a vertical wall on the other side. This slide was built for 4 Chinese people, not 4 fat Europeans and we got so much speed downhill that we almost kicked out of the track while going up the vertical wall. After that we were not allowed to go 4 anymore but we had fun anyway. I did miss the wave where you can surf but I guess I have to go back someday.

Happy Valley which is the theme park has everything a real theme park should have. A lot of different roller coasters and we aimed for the first one and when they had warm up before take off I realized that this will be fun and fun it was and that was the start point for all kind of roller coasters and attractions. It was really fun and we tried them all, from wooden roller coasters to top modern with huge drops and regarding yesterdays post about me and Anton always excite each other. Our last ride was the flume ride and me and Anton started with “The vikings never used any rain ponchos”, everybody else used them but we didn’t and and without exaggerate we created a 10-15m high wall of water and guess where it ended up, yep..in the lap of me and Anton.

Wet like drown kittens we took the metro back towards Shanghai center and we we finished the day on a bar, dripping wet eating a hamburger and drinking ice cold beer, lifes good!

 

Fish, fishes everywhere

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A gray day with the rain hanging in the air so we decided for another animal day and just in time for us to arrive to Shanghai Aquarium it started to rain. Shanghai Aquarium is one of the biggest aquarium in the world, at least if you believe the signs. Anyway its huge and they have one of the biggest under water pathways in the world, somewhere around 120m long where you are surrounded by water, coral reefs, fishes and all you can imaging. Really nice and only this makes it totally worth a visit!

Most of the signs were actually translated to English so you could read about it but there is plenty of typos and me and Anton concluded that Chinese English is an own language, closely related to English but still an own language. I upload a few of all pictures I took, as normal i really recommend to visit the place instead since my photo skills ain’t the best