Out of Russia and into the Baltic States

After Yekaterinburg, the last two stops of the tour were Moscow and St. Petersburg, and since it has been so long since I have posted I don't even know where I should start. In Moscow we stayed in one of the hotel blocks constructed for the athletes of the Moscow Olympics of 1980, which was five tram stops from Red Square. The Moscow subway serves more people each day than the New York and London systems combined - approximately 9 millions riders every twenty-four hours. The system is necessarily very efficient, with cars stopping every thirty seconds at the major stations. Many of the stations are gorgeous, with vaulted ceilings, marble tiling, mosaics, bronze statues and chandeliers to name just a few of the features. Unlike Beijing where stops and exits were additionally labeled with English, the Moscow system is solely in Cyrillic which makes getting around a little bit difficult. Not being able to speak the native language is one thing, but being unable to read anything is even more limiting.

On the first day in Moscow we headed into Red Square, saw the world-famous St. Basil's Cathedral, and then Mike and I headed west of the square and caught a river cruise that took us through the city centre on the Moscow river. During the rest of time in Moscow I toured the Kremlin, including its numerous cathedrals and armory; a couple of art galleries; saw Gorky park; watched the changing of the guard at the Kremlin and walked through Lenin's mausoleum. I've missed the trifecta of preserved communist leaders as I didn't get in to see Mao in Beijing or Ho Chi Minh, but after viewing Lenin I don't think I have missed much. The body could be a wax figurine given its high sheen, and as I don't exactly revere Lenin or subscribe to the communist agenda, it wasn't an experience high on my list of things to do. As we walked down into the black marble crypt there were soldiers every few meters standing at attention making sure that no one entered with a hat on or with their hands in their pockets. There were a few people ahead of me filing by Lenin who were quietly whispering, and they were sternly hushed by the guards. I don't think it would be the sort of duty that would brighten one's day; standing by human remains that have essentially become a major tourist attraction.

Catching the night train at 11:30 in the evening out of Moscow, we covered the approximately 700 kms in about seven hours, the fastest we had traveled as the trains before had a top speed of about 80 km/hr and an average speed of 60 km/hr. I got off the train beyond tired, but we jumped into the day, going on a four-hour walking tour of the city, and then three of us went and climbed to the top of St. Isaac's cathedral. This vantage point provides a 360 degree view of the city, and as I made my way around the outside of the upper dome on the catwalk along with other tourists I was highly impressed. If that wasn't enough, that night most of our group headed to the Mariinsky Theatre to take in the Sleeping Beauty ballet. I can appreciate the athleticism of the dancers, but it is such a highly refined and formalized art form that I really couldn't get into it. Still, the experience was a unique one, which is what I continually reminded myself as I perched on the edge of my cheap seat, craning my head to see around the pillar that I was almost directly behind. You get what you pay for. Other highlights of my time in St. Petersburg were touring the Hermitage, the second-largest art collection in the world after the Louvre; seeing the place where Rasputin had been poisoned; walking through the Church of Spilled Blood and staring awe-struck at the mosaics covering every square inch of the walls and ceilings; traveling by hydrofoil out to the Peterhof Palace, the Russian Versailles where hundreds of water fountains and countless gardens made it seem like walking through a fairy tale; exploring the Peter and Paul Fortress and simply walking the Nevsky Prospekt, the main street of St. Petersburg.

I stayed two nights after the end of the tour to take in the St. Petersburg day festivities as dozens of open-air stages, street performers, and performance art troupes closed down the main drag, all marking the 307th anniversary of St. Petersburg.

Now in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, after my seven-hour bus ride, my plan is to head south for Istanbul and from there fly into Edinburgh and begin traveling through the United Kingdom before I catch my flight out of London on the sixth of July. The time left in my trip doesn't leave much time for dawdling, so I will be moving covering ground quickly. It is a bit odd to be on my own again after being so well taken care of on the Trans-Mongolian tour, but also freeing at the same time to again be solely in control of what I will be doing and where I will be going for the next forty days or so.

From Russia with Love

Gently swaying on our feet with our backpacks on, we waited for the train to come to a halt as it pulled into the station at Yekaterinburg. In the heart of the Ural Mountains and situated on the imaginary line separating Asia from Europe, Yekaterinburg has only been open to foreign visitors since 1991 as it was a bastion of Soviet cloak-and-dagger carrying-ons during the Cold War. None of us cared about this though as we took the four steep steps down to the station platform, thankful to be off the train after nearly fifty hours in transit. Yekaterinburg is our second stop in Russia, the first having been Irkutsk in the heart of Siberia. We spent only one night in Irkutsk, with each of us staying with Russian families scattered along the shore of Lake Baikal, the largest (volume-wise) lake in the world. Mike and I were hosted by a Russian lady who didn't speak a word of English, so we got by doing a lot of pointing while smiling widely.

On the train along with us from Irkutsk was another group which was traveling from Irkutsk straight to Moscow, and they were jealous of me as I hopped off in Yekaterinburg as they still had another twenty-four hours or so to go. While most of them felt they were beginning to come down with cabin-fever, one of them said he felt "cabin-comfortable." He did say this while sipping a beer at nine in the morning though, which may have had something to do with his placid comment as he made his way to the space between the carriages for a smoke. Also on the train was a group of young Russian soldiers who had just finished their one-year mandatory military service and who were understandably excited to be heading home. Sittng up late one night drinking vodka with some of the Russian officers and some of the members of the other tour group, one of the Aussies asked Alexander (a Russian Captain) if we could see his side arm. Poking his head around the corner to see if any of his superiors might be walking by, he pulled his pistol from its holster, emptied the clip and handed it around. I thought that was pretty cool until one of the Aussies said that he had gone into the compartment where all the arms were stored and the soldiers had let him mess around with an AK-47. A very different set of safety standards in this part of the world.

We went on a walking tour of Yekaterinburg today with some of the highlights being beer on tap at little sidewalk stands; a Communist Party member ranting away over a loudspeaker at the base of a statue of Lenin in the town square and the numerous pieces of world-renowned architecture lining the wide streets. We also got to see the rocket that shot down the American spy Francis Gary Powers at the height of the Cold War. It is in many ways surreal to come face to face with pieces of history that I am familiar with only from books - so much of what I have seen and touched makes me wish I had an extensive background in history, biology and geography. I pick up snippets of things that I copy down with the intentinon of learning more once I get home, but to have known beforehand would be even better.

Yekaterinburg, named after Peter the Great's wife Catherine, is a beautiful city. The streets are clean and wide and lined with tall trees, and with summer nearly here the trees are almost completely in leaf. The difference in the weather from Irkutsk to Yekaterinburg has been stark: We left with the temperature around 12 C with ice rimming the rivers and hiding in the underbrush, even passing through a snow storm a few hours after departure, and here in Yekaterinburg the grass is green with the temperature in the high twenties. We Canadians in the group have been constantly wearing shorts, but now even the Australians in the group are feeling warm again.

Spring in Mongolia

Waking up after my first night sleeping on the Trans-Mongolian railway (after we cross into Russia we switch onto the Trans-Siberian line) I looked out the window for a first glimpse of the Gobi Desert. As I unfolded myself from the top bunk, I realized that much of the desert had made its way into our sleeping compartment through the open window. Looking at the sand storms through the window was good enough for me, but until we got off the train in Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia, we had a much more intimate experience with the desert as the sand coated our hair, faces and clothes.

I am now traveling with a group of people for a total of three weeks in an organized tour, and being told where to go, when to catch the next train and which restaurants are the good ones has been very relaxing. After spending over three months taking care of my own itinerary, it is nice to be coddled. Whenever I feel that we are being herded around like imbeciles, I just remind myself that I am basically without any responsibilities, which is a trade I am currently willing to make. There are eleven of us in total, including our Uzbek guide, Laziz. Laziz speaks seven-and-a-half languages (his Cantonese is a little rusty so he doesn't give himself full credit for that one) and has made this trip more times than he can count. His estimate is 49 times. One word to describe Laziz: Capable.

To give you a quick run-down of the rest of the group: There are four Canadians including me: Mike (40), from Vancouver, Nicky (43), also from Vancouver and Jenn (32) from Montreal. Y.K. and Marjie are a retired Chinese-American couple who travel to China every year, and we have two women from Australia; Amy (25) and Madeleine (43). Rounding out the group are more solo travelers; Helgar (59), a South-African, and Elizabeth (27), an Austrian. Everyone is traveling solo except for Y.K and Marjie, and we have all gotten along well in the last week. It has been good to trade stories and hear about such wide-ranging life experiences that are found in a group like this. There are other groups on the train as well, and if anyone ever needs a break from constant company they can just walk to the next carriage to visit someone new. One of these other groups that is following our exact itinerary is a young, hard-drinking Aussie group, and they have extended me an open invitation to their carriage where it seems there is always a party going on.

Pulling into Ulaan Baatar, the most remote capital on earth, reminded me quite a bit of Fort McMurray in the spring. The grass has a slight green tinge in certain places, but most of it is grey and brown, and the dirt and garbage hidden by the winter's snow is being blown up and down the sidewalks. Outside the city there is still ice in the calm shallows of the rivers and snow is hiding in the shade of some of the trees. Still, the weather is beautiful, and I am comfortable in shorts and sandals. We stayed two nights in a hotel in U.B., as the locals call it, and last night we headed out to Terlej National Park where we stayed in a Ger camp. The stark countryside has a wild beauty about it and when I climbed up into the hills north of our camp, the view was breathtaking. It would be great to come back in July when the grass is completely green and the trees are in full leaf, but the scenery is fantastic nonetheless.

Tonight we catch the train at nine in the evening and spend two nights and one day in constant motion. The train travels at an average speed of 60 km/hr, not exactly a blistering pace, but when you are on it for forty hours at a stretch the distance seems to melt away. We will cover over six thousand kilometers as the crow flies - I haven't had the heart to figure out how many hours I will be on train - but the train is actually quite comfortable. We sleep in second-class carriages, so four beds to a berth, and while I can't quite stretch out, I only remind myself what it is like to travel by air and that makes me feel significantly better.

Travel by Rail

Never before in my life have I felt so tall and so white. Chinese stop on the street and ask for my picture, grabbing my arm after I agree and then making those ubiquitous rabbit-ear signs. They have no qualms about staring at me, turning to those near them to say something and then staring again. While I will nod and smile, many times I get no reaction. I am apparently a freak.

Getting into Beijing at six in the morning on the red-eye from Bangkok, I checked into my hotel with the intention of getting some sleep. I had spent the night before on the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and two nights of traveling had nearly incapacitated me. After catching a second wind, I decided that it would be a shame to miss a day of sightseeing in Beijing so I headed out to The Temple of Heaven. Chatting with some Kiwi girls in line, I spent the next few hours with them walking through the temple. By the end of it I was again exhausted and so I said goodbye and got on the metro back to my hotel. The group meeting was at six that evening so I sat my alarm for 5:45 and promptly fell asleep. I slept right through my alarm and got a call from Laziz, the Uzbek tour leader at ten after and rushed down to meet the rest of the group that I will be spending the next three weeks with. A great first impression. What really solidified that impression was being the only one who did not have a Mongolian visa, so the next day Laziz and I headed for the Mongolian embassy. It turned out Laziz needed to get his visa as well, and since he told me he has traveled this route approximately 49 times, I felt assured that my application would be processed in time.

I have spent my time in Beijing rabidly sightseeing, taking in Tienanmen Square, The Forbidden City, Jingum Park, Olympic Park (including The Aquatic Centre and The Bird`s Nest), The Lama Temple and of course The Great Wall. Most of the time I have been moving solo as my visa application meant missing the guided tours, but the off-shoot of that is that I have become quite adept at navigating the metro system. What I did do with the group was the trip out to The Great Wall which was incredible - there are four sections of the wall that can be traveled to from Beijing, and we headed to Mutianyu, the second-furthest section from the capital. I tried to cover as much of the wall as possible, and by the end of the trek I had covered about five kilometers and I don't know how many hundreds of steps. One thing that shook me to my core was finding out that The Great Wall is not visible from space, contradictory to everything I had ever read or heard before. It is by far the most disappointed I have been on this trip. While the "fact" does show up in the occasional school textbook, the smallest thing discernible from the moon would have to be seventy meters wide, and the Wall is approximately six meters at its widest points. Regardless, seeing the Wall stretch on and on, winding its way over hill after hill was one of the most impressive sights of my trip to date.

The day after seeing the Wall, we caught our train out of Beijing the next morning at 7:35 AM, beginning the trip on the Trans-Mongolian Railroad. This track will take us north-west through Mongolia until we intersect the Trans-Siberian line which will take us to our final destination of St. Petersburg. I am currently in Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia and apparently the most remote capital in the world. And does it ever look it.

Chiang Mai

Climbing up to the seventh floor in the forty degree heat, I questioned the worth of getting the cheapest room at the hotel. Each floor is subsequently cheaper as you ascend since there is no elevator and for those who decide that the seventh floor is what their budget dictates, there is no air conditioning either, just to make the lower rooms more attractive. No one else has a room on the top floor, which makes the shared bathroom pretty easy to take and after I booked two-days-worth of tours through the front desk, I got about a 30% discount on my room - from about five dollars to about three dollars. Not too bad. Still, most of the savings goes towards water as I have been sweating buckets at night, laying under the fan and dreaming about Canadian winters.

Yesterday I went on an all-day tour which included a visit to an orchid farm, an elephant ride, a hike into a waterfall where we went swimming, white-water rafting, a bamboo raft ride and a tour of a Burmese hill tribe village. Instead of quality, the tour operators have decided to aim for quantity. The most underwhelming of all of the activities was the the elephant ride, closely followed by the "white-water" rafting. For the elephant ride, I was told that we would have the opportunity to ride on the neck of the elephant and basically bond with it over the course of the morning. Part of the "Getting to Know Your Elephant" included swimming with it in the river and helping the mahout wash it. The reality was a far cry from what was promised. We showed up and were quickly brought over to a raised platform where we hopped on to each elephant in twos. Sitting side-by-side in a tiny raised seat behind the mahout, I and Ling, a Chinese guy in my group, struggled to balance the seat that was leaning precariously to one side. Our mahout didn't speak any English and so was unable to tell us anything about the elephant or being a mahout. Still, our ride was lumbering down to the river, and I was excited to be able to get to help wash it. What the tour operator meant when she said "help wash the elephant" was "stay perched on the back of the elephant as it takes a break at the river to gather some water into its trunks and spray itself." This was a disappointment, but it wasn't a shock as it was for a German couple in our group. Their elephant was considerably more energetic than ours, and spouted equal amounts of mud and water onto itself, though mostly onto the shrieking tourists.

After the elephant debacle and a hike into a waterfall-fed pool, it was time for the white-water rafting. While Thailand has just edged into the rainy season, it has not yet made a difference to the water levels. I admire the perseverance it takes for the raftsmen to continue their operation in the dribble called a river. Our zodiac had five people in it, plus our guide, and by the time the ride ended we were all exhausted. Not from paddling and braving the pounding water, but from continually having to heave ourselves from side to side to extricate the raft from yet another rock that it had gotten hung up on. It was fun enough as we splashed the occupants of other boats as we got jammed on the same series of rocks and laughed at the tedious rate we were making our way downstream.

Today I went into the highlands for a half-day tour through the rain forest, and it turned out to be exactly what it was billed as. Called The Flight of the Gibbon, the tour uses a series of zip-lines to take customers on a two-and-a-half hour trip through the canopy. Sweeping through the branches a hundred or so feet off the ground, it was a great way to see the forest and assumedly get a taste of what it might be like to be a gibbon. The tour is on private land and picks its way through the territory of a family of gibbons; hence the name. While we heard them on occassion, we didn't get to see any. Our leader who takes three tours a day through the trees and has been working there for over a year has only caught sight of a gibbon ten times, so I think we were fortunate just to get close enough to hear them.

Tomorrow I take the overnight train to Bangkok where on Saturday I fly out to Beijing. I got a sleeping berth, so hopefully it will be an easier trip than the overnight bus I took earlier in my trip.

Koh Phi Phi (Island Turtle Turtle)

Having now dived the Great Barrier Reef and what some say is some of the best water in Thailand, I realize that I have been spoiled. Terribly spoiled. Madagascar was better than any dive since then, though the problem might be that I am not spending enough time and money to get away from the daily tourist dive sites. My two dives at Koh Phi Phi were not really that exciting in terms of wildlife or the visibility, though I did get to see a Giant Moray Eel and a Hawksbill turtle. What I was really hoping to see were some reef sharks, but unfortunately we couldn't find any. Instead, nudibranchs - colourful little sea slugs - are what the two divemasters leading the dive pointed out again and again. I tried to summon the same level of enthusiasm, but the sea slugs were still just kind of... underwhelming. The divemasters, eyes wide and gurgling unintelligibly through their regulators, would point at a blot of fluorescent colour two to four centimeters long and then clap their hands. I will consider myself a seasoned diver when slugs elicit the same sort of reaction from me.

After catching the ferry to mainland Thailand and then the bus to the next ferry on the west coast to take me out to Koh Phi Phi, I arrived at about 2:30 in the afternoon and made my way directly to Blue View Divers. A friend I met on Koh Phagnan had highly recommended them, so I decided that I would head out for a day with them. I was glad for the recommendation, as the island has a plethora of dive shops - about seventeen at last count - and I had no idea which one I should give my business. The thing that makes Blue View unique is that they dive off a Thai longtail. A longtail is basically long wooden boat with a fairly shallow draft propelled by what looks like a retired two-liter engine. The prop sits at the end of a shaft about eight to ten feet past the stern, hence the name "longtail." All the other dive companies do their trips with bigger boats that dock at the main pier, and with ferries needing the space during the day, all boats docked at the pier have to be launched before eight in the morning. The longtail gives Blue View some flexibility in terms of departure times, and we headed out around noon for the two dives. I was thankful for the late start as I have come down with a sore throat and I am trying to catch up on my sleep before the beginning of the Trans-Siberian leg of my journey.

At the dive shop I asked to be pointed in the direction of the cheapest hostel on the island. I was given directions to The Rock where I foolishly booked a night before actually looking at where I would be sleeping. The seventeen-bed dorm looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years, and graffiti on the wall gave a detailed and graphic history of each mattress in the room. This sort of reading did not make for sweet dreams. The next day I went looking for another place to say, and lo and behold, across the street from The Rock (which I now refer to as The Hole) there was another hostel, for the exact same price, and significantly cleaner.

I spent a lazy day after my diving day catching up on rest, and on my last day on the island I went kayaking to some of the less-visited beaches. I rented an open-hulled sea kayak with Alex, a Swede I met in my new hostel, and we spent the morning on the water. We found our rhythm after fifteen minutes of paddling, and after that I am sure we were the envy of every tourist on the yachts and catamarans docked in the harbor. Our first stop was Monkey Beach, though there were unfortunately no monkeys to be seen, and then we paddled across the mouth of the harbor to Maya Beach. The snorkeling at each beach was stunning, and I saw nearly as much snorkeling as I did diving.

I caught the ferry to Phuket in the afternoon where I am now, and tomorrow I fly north to Chiang Mai. I hear that the weather up north is significantly cooler give the higher elevation, especially at night, and I am looking forward to the change. Especially with this burn I now have from three hours on a sea kayak without a shirt on.