With my usual slick efficiency, I've managed to, er, be home for five
days before sending my last update. Brilliant, eh!? But I'm sending it
anyway, to say hello to everyone in London, and that my mobile number
hasn't changed, and that I'm looking forward to seeing you all, if I
haven't seen you already.
And thank you and goodbye to all my travelling companions, distant and
recent, and do stay in touch, especially if you live in a city worth
visiting ,o) It was great meeting you all, and more than made up for
all the tossers we met as well!
CHINA
China apparently invented both flushing toilets and feng shui, but we
didn't see much evidence of either during our time there. Perhaps it was
the Cultural Revolution that did away with all those bourgeois concepts
of aesthetics and harmony, because modern China is disfigured by
hideous decaying concrete tower blocks, a permanent grey haze, and
unspeakable filth everywhere you go. Even in the countryside.
It was also unbelievably hard work - the language barrier is funny at
times, like when you don't understand what they're shouting at you, so
they start banging on their notices written *in Chinese* (as if to say: Can't you read? GOD)
- but when every single transaction or contact involves five minutes of
gesturing or drawing pictures (and is often interrupted by the taxi
driver or whatever just driving off shaking their head - this once
happened nine or ten times in a row), it just gets exhausting.
The tourist attractions are overpriced and overrun, and make no
concessions (eg dual-language signs) for foreigners, despite often
charging twice as much. They also tend, as with the Terracotta Warriors,
to be embedded deep within vast labyrinths of irrelevance - exhibition
halls full of photos of visiting Chinese dignitaries, for instance.
We'd been looking forward to cruising down the Yangtze River to see the
Three Gorges, a trip that will be impossible in a few years when yet
another controversial dam project floods the area. But the river is so
blighted by moulding, water-stained concrete buildings congealed in
clusters along its banks that you just come away thinking 'best thing
for it'. Especially, and I'll try not to go on about this as it sounds
terrible (and I did it already in my last email!), having spent several
days on a boat along with hundreds of spitting, chain-smoking locals. Almost everyone smokes here, sometimes even alternating mouthfuls of
dinner with puffs on a fag, and the results are continually hoiked up at
top volume and spat on the floor, regardless of where they are. True,
it's their country, but it's still a bit stomach-turning at five in the
morning (after having been ordered out of bed by the ships' steward;
they knock on the door and bark 'You! Get up! Now!' - it's actually
quite funny... in hindsight...).
So when we got to Beijing, we heaved a sigh of relief at the
impressively clean and modern city. It's built on a vast scale
(Tiananmen Square is *huge*), but it's flat and has wide, leafy cycle
lanes on every road, so that hiring push-bikes is the best way to get
around. In fact, we were just starting to like the place when some
bastard stole our bikes. It was clear that China was just not for us,
but it held us in its clutches for another
week, via bureaucracy, broken buses and border closures, before we
managed to get to Mongolia by bus, train and taxi.
MONGOLIA
After China, we weren't expecting too much, which is perhaps partly why
Mongolia was so overwhelmingly wonderful. Ulaan Batar has a strangely
Eastern European feel to it, but we only stayed one night, so merely
registered our first glimpse of blue sky in three weeks (see haze above)
before hiring a jeep and driver and heading off into the unknown for
six days on a tour. The three of us were joined by a girl called Carmen,
who comes from Germany, although I'm sure that that had nothing at all
to do with the fact that she knew, and liked, most of the god-awful
Eighties pop music our driver played.
Mongolia is beeeeee-yew-tiful. The place is so unspoilt, even the roads
stop a few hours out of town and are replaced by dirt tracks over the
valleys and hills, so it feels as if you're skimming across the surface
of green swells that surge as far as the eye can see.
The Mongolians reminded me of the Vietnamese in their dignified
indifference to tourists; they're not unfriendly (although not as
immediately smiley as the SE Asians), but it's very obvious that their lives
are unaffected by your presence, which was great because that's what
we'd come to see. And they're so dashing! The men ride everywhere in
their big sash-tied overcoats, battered hats and boots, slouching
casually in their saddles but looking quite capable of pillaging the
entire known world before breakfast. Our driver, Zana, was great - he
fussed over us almost as much as his beloved jeep, and eventually took
us home to meet 'Mummy', who served us salty yak's milk with dinner, and
several shots of her best vodka afterwards.
After a couple of days of jolting about and stopping every five minutes
to take pictures, we arrived at the idyllic White Lake and were given a
ger to ourselves, a round white tent with a round, glowing stove in the
centre and wooden, hand-painted beds around the inside. That first night
we sat round the table with bowls of vodka and had to restrict our
raptures about the place to once every half hour, we were so excited.
We went riding in the morning on the hardy Mongolian ponies with
Khishgee, a cute Mongolian guide with intriguingly ripped jeans. It was
Monika and Carmen's first time, so they were led, Mischka was content to
amble along looking the picture of elegance as usual (the old trout),
and I got a lively, nervy horse that only needed the slightest
encouragement to take off across the grassland. It was bliss, galloping
in huge circles around the others in the cold bright sunshine and the
spectacular scenery... and we were only half a mile from home when my
horse swerved sharply for some reason and, distracted by the view, I
landed on the ground a split second later. It hurt so much I didn't even
care what an arse I'd looked, which was lucky really as I was doing a
kind of theatrical writhing thing (think 'injured' WWF wrestler) for a
minute or so before the others turned up.
As my original horse had run for the hills, Khishgee brought a
replacement, which regarded me sympathetically out of its big brown
eyes. Or so I thought, before the bastard kicked me in the leg. Fervently
hoping it would end up as Pritt-stick, I revenged myself in the
meantime by giving it a couple of gratuitous whacks with a rope-end once
I was safely on its back.
We were gutted to have to leave the next day, but the scenery was a
major compensation, as was stopping for a picnic lunch in a particularly
stunning valley. This being Mongolia, there was no wicker hamper or
Pimm's, just a plastic bag full of dismembered marmot and a couple of raw
onions. We weren't too fazed by this; lunch the previous day had been
the same, except that the bones had looked as if someone had already had
a pretty good go at them. We were soon up to our knuckles in marmot
fat, an experience not to be missed, unless like Carmen you're a
vegetarian - lean pickings for her there.
RUSSIA
Leaving the next day on the Trans-Sib, it felt really weird to be
without Monika for the first time in three months or something. However,
a pair of Mongolian guys ensured we didn't brood for too long over our
loss, by stealing my purse and Mischka's Walkman as soon as we got on
the train. It was a weird journey, five days in a little compartment
crossing thousands of miles of steppe with only instant noodles and the
occasional bottle of vodka for company, but we survived and got to
Moscow, where they have the most hardcore winos on earth. You know how
drunks always hang out around mainline train stations? Well, these made
even the scariest Scottish alkies look like perfumed girls' blouses -
the smell would make your eyes water from twenty yards away, and the
range of facial injuries had to be seen to be believed.
The underground itself was seriously impressive though, and so is the
architecture in both cities. We spent our last few days trailing round
museums and so on (OK, and 'Irish' pubs), so I won't bore you with all
that.
Thank you and goodnight!
PS Oooh - how could I forget our favourite China story when it sums up
the whole godforsaken hellhole for us...!? We were travelling from
Guilin to Chongqing, which was supposed to take 18 hours, but had lasted
24. The bus driver dropped us on the outskirts of town, telling us we'd
have to get a taxi into the centre - we protested that they should drop
us at the bus station, but he, and several passengers, said no, taxi
ok, taxi ok. You can't argue if you don't speak the language, and we
were knackered anyway, so we gave up and got into a taxi. Imagine our
surprise when we arrive in the town centre to find... we're still 130 km
from Chongqing! As we were the only three people going to Chongqing,
they'd obviously decided to make up for lost time by not bothering with
it. Genius!
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