I've also had my first Baltika on Russian soil, had Russian kebab, drunk straight vodka and danced to some crazy remix of “Coco Jamboo” in a Russian disco. Living the dream!
Beijing was pretty cool – though the combination of the heat and the pollution made the city well smoky, which was nice to look at on the taxi ride from the airport when everything was all green trees and grey skies, but it wasn't so much fun to be out in! Because I ended up with only one day there I missed the Great Wall and instead went for a walk from my hostel to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was awesome, I ended up just staying there all day trying to see everything. One of my favourite bits was the Hall of Ceramics because a) it was well air-conditioned, b) it was mostly empty (because apparently few people outside of archaeologists are interested in pottery shards) and c) it had some of the oldest stuff in the museum. All the crowds of people who seemed to be avoiding the place definitely missed out! The Hall of Clocks was also wicked, with all the elaborate clocks that the emperors collected, and I fortuitously arrived there at the time they demonstrated what some of the clocks did on the hour. I took lots of photos of obscure (and non-obscure) things that interested me around these places, some of which I've put up on flickr for anyone else who might be interested, though chances are you're quite possibly not (someone else's museum photos, "a good time for all")!
That night me and most of the Vodkatrain group went out to do karaoke in this crazy multi-storey hotel-like building where every room was a karaoke room. There was lots of shouting along to Bon Jovi and good times.
The overnight train from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar was wicked, and I spent most of the time playing cards and trying to get photos through the train windows (hence, as a result, most of my pictures have reflections of my camera in them – ah well!).
Mongolia completely swamped Beijing in its coolness (sorry China, but I'm siding with Chinggis). We got a day in Ulaanbaatar where we ate all-you-can-eat Mongolian barbecue, went to the theatre to see traditional Mongolian singing/music/dancing (where I found out that Queen Amidala comes from Mongolia and all Mongolian string instruments have horses' heads on top of them) and then tried to go for a pub crawl on what turned out to be Mongolian “dry day” (first day of the month). We successfully found 2 pubs in the city to get drinks from.
The next day we went out to the countryside to stay in the Ger camp. Far out, Mongolian countryside is brilliant, it's all plains and mountains and herds of horses and Ger tents and open space. Our tents were well comfy and while we were there I went horseriding, climbed mountains, tried archery, tried fermented horse milk and saw a mini-nadaam (wrestling, professional archery, horse racing). I think 2/3rds of the population of Mongolia do that pretty much all the time. Mongolia is awesome!!
Also, our honcho through all of Mongolia, Billy, was a real champion. He took us to his house, recommended bands to me, and I got to explain the original trilogy to him as a follow on from him only seeing the prequels, something I've never done before but which was well fun!
Hello from Mongolia!
More China/Mongolia pictures: here
I'll save more Russia stories for next time, after I've seen more of Moscow than what I can currently spot out my hostel window!
I hope everyone is good back home in Perth! Many fond and party regards!
- Moriarty
How was the fermented milk? sounds pretty rad =P and how's the Russian vodka?
ReplyDeleteThe fermented milk was great! Though I was the only one out of our group who thought so.... The best description I heard was, "it tastes like a horse smells", which was true, but it also felt very hearty!
ReplyDeleteThe Russian vodka has been excellent (provided you don't pick the cheapest option on the menu), though unfortunately I've now hit my vodka quota and won't be drinking any more of it! "Vodka quota" = one big night of plenty o' vodka, which was good enough for me!