Around the world in 80 raves Chapters 1, 2 and 3

25th September 2007

Hello lovely friends,
Just sending you all a first installment of the big trip. Flew out of London on the 18th September on a flight to Moscow feeling slightly nervous but very excited. It was strange waiting to get on the plane surrounded by severe looking Russians as if I was about to enter an old spy movie. Arriving in Moscow was pretty much the same; on the whole Russian people don't smile much and the place is all rather stark and crumbling and run down looking. There's lots of cracked and broken concrete, ugly buildings, functional no frills vehicles, rusty metal etc.etc.However with the help of a friendly woman on the train from the airport I found a taxi and eventually arrived at Sweet Moscow Hostel, a little haven in the big bad world. Very basic it was, just someone's tiny appartment converted to a hostel, bunk beds in every room, one shower and loo for 18 people, wires hanging out of the walls in the stair well and one of those cranky old lifts that you wondered if it was safe to enter; but full of friendly interesting folk so I instantly felt at ease. Next day the weather was fine, the sun was shining bright and warm so I set out on the big Moscow walkabout. All I can say is amazing!...The buildings of the Kremlin, St Basils cathedral with the bright coloured onion domes, the Red Square and the Lenin museum are just stunning. I met a gang of young Russian bagpipe players on the street and started chatting, they gathered some of their mates together and sang a beautiful Russian harmony song for me, shared their beer and just hung out for a while. Had a great day..back to Sweet Moscow for sleep. A young couple from Leeds at the hostel happened to be on the same train as me so next evening we set out together on the Metro to find the train station. The Moscow Metro is another story, each station lavishly decorated each in a different style and some as if you could hold a grand ball inside with mosiac work or frescos or ornate plasterwork. We emerged to find we had 4 railway stations to choose from with trains leaving for all parts of this vaste country, all signs in Russian script and none of us knew which one we should be at. We all had a minor panic while we trudged from station to station trying to find someone with a language in common to ask but eventually we found the right one and train number 6 to Mongolia. There starts a new chapter, a timeless 5 days in the world of the vodka train. It was fantastic fun, much partying, laughing, chatting, hanging out, reading, sleeping, eating, card, dice and Russian backgammon playing, taking exercise treking up and down the train to and from the restaurant car. Stopping at various stations along the way to buy yummie goodies to munch from old peasant ladies. So we travelled 4hrs time difference towards the sun from Moscow (7hrs from home), the days passed incredibably fast and now I'm in Ulaan Battar in Mongolia. Thanks Maud for the hostel tip, I'm very happy with my room with Mr Temujiin, I have a front room with a balcony overlooking the main street from which I can watch the world go by. Tomorrow I'm off out on the horse riding and staying overnight in a traditional ger (yert). Then it's back on the train to Beijing in 4 days time....the next episode. There's loads of photos on my new magic phone mp3 camera yoke which I'm delighted with.

Monday 1st October 2007

I can hardly believe it. I'm in Beijing already, city of 28,000,000 people, enormous skyscrapers of extraordinary modern architecture as far as the eye can see, seas of traffic, with pockets of old style hutong China in between. There's a cloud of pollution hanging over the city which I'm told the sun sometimes manages to break through but at the moment its's raining and grey. But on many levels it does seem to work; it feels safe here, it's easy to get around, the infra structure is in place, there's no hassel on the streets, the police do not seem to carry weapons, people smile. I have an excellent room in the Saga Youth Hostel with a huge super kingsize comfortable bed and the hostel is just brilliant. But all that is only a very first impression as I only arrived yesterday afternoon and as yet have not been exploring the city. Stepping back a bit in time....On the train from Ulaan Bataar to Beijing I met a lovely young Mongolian woman with her beautiful 2 yr old daughter Elizabeth, who lives in Canada and therefore speaks excellent English. She was studying agricultural economics and also working for an NGO which promoted Mongolian Culture abroad particularly through the publication of tradition children's folk stories. She was being met at the train station by one of her NGO colleagues, a man called Dahli who was from Mongolian China and therefore a Mongolian and Chinese speaker. She invited me to join her later that afternoon for a sight seeing trip and so we planned to meet after one hour to head out of town as quickly as possible and put our feet on the Great Wall of China. Dahli the driver brought his father along because he was also very keen to visit the Wall again. It was around 6 pm before we finally managed to get away from town and begin the 67km journey. It was already getting dark, the traffic was extremely heavy because by then it was rush hour and we were wondering if we would still be able to get onto the Wall at tht late hour or even see anything in the dark if we could. But we were all in great spirits and headed on regardless... arriving to find the entrance gates closing. But our guide persuaded the attendants to let us in anyway and Tuyana, her wee daughter and myself were allowed onto the wall for half an hour. It was floodlit on account of this being a big festival week in Beijing (and of course because I was there) and we had the wall to ourselves, not another tourist in sight. It was just brilliant. After we went to a small little restaurant where I ate the best Chinese food ever, nothing like anything I ever got in a western Chinese restaurant. So that was my first night in Beijing. But now I need to step back another 4 days to relate the tale of my night out in the wilderness of beautiful Mongolia. I was driven out to the National Park about 60 Kms from Ulaan Bataar by my driver Bodr to a small settlement of Gers or Yurts as the Russians call them set in a forest now golden with autumn colour beside a gushing river. There I was greeted by beautiful Natsagaa and her handsome husband Tsogoo and settled in my warm comfortable ger where I was served tea and lunch. The sun was shining bright and the weather fairly warm. Fed and watered, Natsagaa and I set of for a walk which included visiting her friends and relations around and about. First stop was her parents'place, a tiny wooden shed the size of a garden shed. Inside her parents aged 75ish, looking 85ish by our standards, toothless and wrinkled, smiling and beautiful. Their tiny home which was warm and cosy and heated by a woodburner with a Buddhist altar opposite the door, was basic but very attractive. I was given homemade yogourt and soft cheese to taste and vodka to drink. Next stop, a tiny ger which housed Lemar, aged 78, her daughter and three granddaughters, extremely poor, no man in the house and absolutely no luxuries. But again the welcome was huge; a loaf of dry bread was cut and shared and tea was served. There were so many other characters that I was introduced to, old folk, children, the local mechanic etc. I was sung songs by the oldies and children which are recorded on the amazing phone/camera mp3 yoke for the audio Round the World in 80 raves CDtobe released next year.

Wed 3rd October

There's too much detail going into this, I have to start being more brief as so much happens every day that I'm getting further and further behind. So back to now and Beijing. I am gob-smacked by this place, it is a totally unbelievable experience. So vaste, the most astonishing huge new architectural constructions as far as the eye can see, and then the old buildings from the days of the empire, so beautiful and well maintained, and so many people especially this week which is National holiday week. But people smile, give way and respect each other, it feels completely safe nd organised and it works. Bicycles have complete priority on the roads and are definitely the best way to get about. The food is fantastic, and so cheap, had more than we could eat of delicious vegetarian food for 2 people with a bottle of beer for less than a couple of euro. I have had the lovely Lily to show me around Beijing and show me the ropes. Lily is a young ex-student of Lisa Citarelli, my friend who was teaching in China a few years ago (thanks Lisa for putting her in touch with me). So have been seeing the sights by bike, by subway, by bus and by walking. Last night, surprise surprise, when I returned to the hostel there was a note in my door from Dan Hummel (of West Cork Sheeps Head and famous for the Japanese hot tub for those who don't know him) who had just arrived back from Japan. He was out at a bar across the city a way where Ato (last seen at the Ballydehob busking competition 2005 playing with Fiona and Ruti) had a gig. Lily and I jumped in a taxi and went off to find him. Mad or what? I will truely never be the same again after this trip.

Tuesday 9th October 2007

Dali, Yunnan Province S. China. So here I am in the ancient city of Dali, and still raving. Beijing was amazing to experience but a relief to leave. Big cities have never really been my thing and Beijing is bigger than anything you can imagine. Getting down here involved yet another train experience, this time only 39hrs and a Chinese train. Beijing train station, enormous, absolutely state of the art modern and so easy to use despite the millions of passengers. For the first day on the train I thought I was the only Euopean, and was sharing what they call a hard sleeper with 5 Chinese ladies aged between 18 and 75yrs. All very smiley and welcoming but communication was very limited until one of them got the bright idea of texting messages off to her English speaking friend for translating and then handing me the phone to do the same. On day 2 I met a mad bunch of French and Ozzy people, 11 of them also on their way to Dali so I tagged along. Aurianne was a Chinese French woman who could speak Chinese, newly wed back in her parent's village trad. Chinese style, to a mad Irish/Ozzy. They were off to do some trecking down here with all their Parisien and Oz friends and relations. I trailed along after them off the train at Kunming and straight onto a bedbus for Dali. The bus actually got called back for us, having just set off, because we were such a big gang. Another, first, a Chinese smelly bedbus, no seats just bunk beds, duvets aand pillows. Gazed out the windows for a while at the Chinese rural landscape, what a difference to Beijing. Total low tech agriculture, small handtilled patches of rice paddies, and every spare space filled with other kinds of veg, spinach, pakchow, pumpkins, maize, cabbage and all those exotic Chinese greens we love to grow back there in West Cork. And in between masses of wild Cosmos flowers. It's all pretty impressive on the food production front, lots of peasant farmers beavering away in their old style coolie hats. There's no wasted cultivatable land anywhere. If there's a space grow veg on it but I don't suppose any of it is very organic! After a while I dozed off and awoke in Dali new town, an ugly, bustly sprawling mess off a place, and we were then straight onto another small bus to bring us the 10kms or so to the old town. I tagged along again with my new found travelling companions to their hostel where I booked myself in for the night, a really nice comfortable place to recover from the journey. Being with a Chinese speaker certainly made that epic journey run very smooth for me. Dali is a very beautiful and historically interesting place though rather on the touristy side, and particularly so because it was still the National holiday week and all historic places are swarming with prosperous Chinese Holiday makers. This is the place where Dan Hummel has a house and also an interest in a mountain guesthouse venture. So on his instruction next day I found my way to the mountain chairlift (another first for me) and trundled up the steep mountainside looking down on the tree tops and Buddhist graves, wondering if they were people who fell off their chairs. Then arriving at the terminal I heaved myself up numerous steep steps, past a couple of beautifull Buddhist/Tao temples to arrive at the Higherlands guesthouse. What a wonderful sanctuary of peace after all my travels. Ah Ping and Li Peng, gave me a first class welcome, another couple of hikers from France turned up for the night, really nice and then Chris from Bremen in Germany who owns a bar in the town, taking a break for a few days. Excellent food and company followed by a sound night's sleep and then I awoke to find myself in the clouds, rain pouring down just like West Cork. But it was lovely there anyway, went for an 11km walk in the rain to stretch the legs. Today I came back down to the sunshine. Dan had phoned from where ever it is that he's trecked off to, to arrange that I could sleep in his house down on the outskirts of town. There is a lovely young Chinese family who live there and look after it for him and it's just really nice and comfortable. Today I borrowed a bike and cycled off out of town and then down through a village to the enormous lake that Dali sits beside. The people are just so smiley and friendly, "Ni Ha" they all say. It's rice harvest time and they are all working away cutting, stacking to dry in neat rows of little hat things and hand threshing it in any available flat space, the village square, the living room, the courtyard. All the doors are open and you gaze in to a game of Majong, or to my delight a bunch of women with their babies getting their hair done. They all beamed at me as I passed and beckoned me in, so we passed a while exchanging names and ages and the children trying to say "hello in English". hen I shook hands with each of them "pleez ta meet yo, Bye Bye". I haven't mentioned the food yet. I really like the Chinese style of eating, nothing like anything ever tasted in a Western style Chinese restaurant. You choose your dishes to be prepared from an amazing array of different vegetables, live sea and freshwater foods, meats and all sorts of plants that I don't recognise at all. The individual dishes are then wokked up while you wait, you communally pick away with your chopsticks and it all tastes incredibly fresh and healthy. Yummy. However I must be on my way soon, have booked a train ticket from Kunming to Nanning for Thursday and then hopefully can get on another train to Hanoi in Vietnem on Friday night. Tempus fugit and I'm really keen to spend time in Vietnam. I'm looking forward to doing some seaside stuff like swimming and snorkellng for a while. So that's it for episode 3.