Gettin ready for Christmas

Wrap Up No.2

Inspired by Cameron I decided to jot down a few of my own post-adventure unblogged events and observations. Unfortunately my post is both shorter and unalphabetized but I hope you'll read anyway.


Hands on the ceiling seat belts.

The 'blueberry', the van we rode through the Gobi, didn't have seatbelts but we quickly learned that pressing your palms against the roof was a good way to avoid having your bum fly in the air when we went through potholes or small ravines. Despite Mooch's expert driving I would estimate we hit a pothole every 15 minutes and a particularly eventful pothole every hour or so, so we spent a great deal of time with our arms raised.

Pancakes that taste like nothing.

We ordered potato pancakes several times in Russia and they were always disappointed. I would describe how they tasted but quite honestly they didn't taste like anything. At times it was hard to know they were in your mouth at all. After some consideration I can honestly say that my repeated failure to find delicious potato pancakes-not in Irkutsk (at 'The Liverpool' or the swanky place on the river), nor in Moscow at the weird Ukrainian place near the Kremlin, was the single most disappointing part of the Trans-Siberian. I had really high expectations.

The Bristol Scale.

I realized something after the trip, Cameron. You're adventures on the Bristol Scale, remember how they were somewhat more eventful than my own? And remember our discussions on what it might have been that you ate? 'Bad peanut', for example? Drinking water around the rock covered in tp? I realized that we overlooked, or I at least overlook, a fairly important factor-you used to be a vegetarian! That probably explains everything. Mystery solved.

The girl at the desk of the 'Napoleon' in Moscow who thought we were twins.

I really don't know what to say about this. Was she blind? I don't think so. She was very insistent and she brought up the whole 'twins thing' at least three or four times though. One possibility is that her limited English vocabulary is clustered around subjects relating to people being twins. Maybe she did a diorama or something on twins in English class. Alternatively she could be colour blind. Or she may have mistaken my "niet" for "no, but please ask me again in 2 to 3 hours when I return". Going to Russia leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions.


great post Cameron, you reminded me of a lot of things,


Andrew

Wrap Up

On a semi-regular basis, memorable but heretofore unblogged events from the trip pop into my head. So I’ve typed them up (alphabetically):

1. Accordion: There was a wonderful old man who lived at Nikita’s guesthouse on Olkhon Island. He had very twinkly, mischievous eyes. He studied English by reading the dictionary. He gave us a very accurate ranking of the comprehensibility of accents (Irish was last). His singing girls didn’t show up for his accordion concert, so it was cancelled. This upset him so much he was unable to speak (he had dressed in a traditional costume and told everyone to come). The singing girls arrived the next night, but they were the most frumpy, unhappy looking women I’ve ever seen. And they sounded like the baritone version of tortured cats. The old man pranced behind them, making deep eye contact with everyone in the room in turn and hamming it up for every picture. He announced each song, and said which country it came from. But I swear they all sounded identical.

2. Arcade: We bravely ventured into a seemingly deserted building in Beijing. Down a hallway and up an elevator was a big, nearly empty, cheap arcade. There was a shirtless man who played the “arcade free-throws” game the entire time we were there. The way he was playing (alone, with great focus, not pausing between games) and his incredible skill (he could finish throwing a third ball before the first fell through the basket) made us think that perfecting this game was this was pretty much his life’s work.

3. Beach: We were taken by the 24 year old owner of our hotel in St. Petersburg to a funk bar. There was sand outside to make a good sized “beach.” The bar was in the middle of an industrial area, so the contrast was fun. Some Russian guys breakdanced.

4. Bones: In Mongolia, you see animal skeletons everywhere. The best are camel skulls. In the Gobi we found a neatly stacked pile of camel legs.

5. Bridges: St. Petersburg is a bit like Venice; there are lots of canals and rivers, and in the Spring there is sometimes flooding. At 2:00am many of the larger bridges open for several hours so that freighters (long, narrow, and fast) can go through. The bridges are lit up when they open, and lots of people go out at night to see them. We went with a group from the hostel, but it disintegrated long before we managed to walk all the way there. (At night, the streets of St. Petersburg are full of people stopping you and offering champagne.) The soberest among us got there eventually, and it was very nice.

6. Camels: One family we stayed with in Mongolia had a large herd of camels. They keep all the baby camels tied up, while the mothers are free to wander around and graze. The mother camels come to nurse their baby camels one at a time. It’s very organized: as one mother walks away, you can see another mother in the distance slowly walking in. Simultaneous to the feeding, the camel is milked. This seems tricky to do; the milker must stand awkwardly and balance the bucket on her knee. At dusk, all the mother camels came back in a group. Each found her baby camel and lay down to sleep beside it.

7. Concert: There was a children’s concert at Nikita’s. Kids (about 5-12) sang and danced and played instruments. None of them were the slightest bit self-conscious, even the boy whose primary task was to do continuous cartwheels in a circle while a girl sang.

8. Danger: On the first day of the Gobi trip it rained heavily. We were still in the steppes, so it got quite muddy. Very unexpectedly, the van took a weird skid and went up on two wheels. It came pretty close to a rollover. Mooch thought this was hilarious.

9. Football: We went to an Ireland/Russia soccer match when we were in Moscow (a Euro Cup Qualifier). Luzhniki Stadium seats over 78 thousand people, and even though it was only 70% full, it was still pretty cool just to be there. The fans behind the goals are the most hardcore, and they would do call and answer chants across the field and set off flares. Our Irish friends from the hostel sat in the segregated Irish section (for safety), but we got tickets from a scalper and sat with the Russians. It was a 0-0 draw, a good result for outmatched Ireland.

10. Game: In Mongolia, Andrew and I invented a game that involved throwing things at water bottles to knock them over. A few kids played with us and got really into it. I like to think that they’ve kept playing it.

11. Hitchhiking: In Mongolia (and to a lesser extent in Russia), it is very common to hitchhike. But it's not free, you negotiate a price. In Dalanzadgat town, Mongolia, we did this with Mooch after walking to a store. It only took him a couple minutes to find a willing driver, and it cost less than $1.

12. Lenin: We saw Lenin’s corpse. Kind of a weird experience. The Mausoleum is dark and cold. Lenin looks real, but grey. Read about how they keep the body preserved here.

13. Mongol Rally: There is an annual event called the “Mongol Rally.” About 300 participants buy inexpensive cars in London and drive them to Mongolia where they are sold for charity. Only about 20% make it all the way. We met several people who were taking the train home after completing the rally. They told us cool stories. One team went in an ambulance, another in a fire truck. The most challenging route is to go down through Europe and the Balkans, across Turkey and Northern Iran, then through the ‘stans. We learned the term “rally-ender,” referring to the massive potholes that could total a car.

14. Napoleon: An Irish guy in Moscow got lost on his way home from the bar, which was only 50 meters from the hostel. He wandered around for hours until he was picked up by the police the next morning. He knew the name of our hostel was “Napoleon” (it’s in the same area where Napoleon stayed after conquering Moscow), so he just kept repeating “Napoleon! Napoleon!” Of course the police thought he was saying he was Napoleon, and that was crazy.

15. Pit Toilet: Pit toilets were expected in Mongolia, but not in the St. Petersburg airport!

16. Rally-Ender: Our friend Jack in St. Petersburg had a rally-ending night out. He got separated, and woke up the next morning, in a distant park, with no wallet and no memory of how he got there. This really shook him up. So much so that when he finally made it back to the hostel, he immediately bought a flight home to Australia. A real rally-ender.

17. Security: There was a huge police/army presence in Moscow. (But very little in St. Petersburg.) You get to recognize the different kinds of units. There are the lowest level army grunts. Most of them look about 16, and they wear jackets that are far too big. Then there are the elite troops, each of them over six feet, and with pants tucked into their heavy boots. Then there are a few different kinds of officers, and police, and etc. For public events, thousands of grunts are used to make human fences, standing shoulder to shoulder. On side streets you see huge, six-wheeled troop transporters full of reinforcements, just sitting and waiting.

18. Shamans: On Olkhon Island we saw a shaman ritual at the special rock. We have no idea what it was for, but it involved throwing vodka out of small cups.

19. Smuggle-Train: At the beginning of the train trip from Mongolia to Russia, a Mongolian woman came to our compartment and gave us four pairs of new jeans. She did this with every compartment in our car with various items of clothing. When we were in Russia she came back to collect the jeans, and paid one of the Mongolian girls in our compartment about $3.

20. Tattoos: The frequent absence of shirts on trains made our lack of tattoos embarrassingly conspicuous. I vaguely recall making plans to get half a snake head on each of our backs so we could stand together and form a full snake head. I’m hoping that deal is off; I’m gonna feel really bad if Andrew’s gone ahead with this...

21. Thirst: While stopped for lunch in the Gobi, a solitary camel stared at us expectantly. Mooch showed us that we could give it water from a nearby well. Andrew scoped out water with a big bucket at the end of long stick, and poured it into a tire which had been cut and spread out to make a trough. The camel drank three buckets full, and seemed happy, but not grateful.

And with that, I’m done. Thanks SudmantFamilyBlog for hosting! Here’s to the many future travels, adventures, discoveries, and dogs of the month that shall grace these pages!

-Cameron

'Nuff Said

Thanks for Reading! (Andrew)

Here's a post I wrote on my phone in the airport before leaving (with typos for authenticity):

After 41 days of adventure in China, Mongolia and Iussia with Cameron i am now in the St petersburg airport waiting to board a flight that will eventually take me to the uk.

To sum up, here are a bunch of things I will miss, and a few things I won't, in no particular order:

Miss : hilarious mullets in Russia, hilarious t-shirts in China ("Bob Damp" still makes me chuckle), "for men" drink, mystery meat (it's an adventure!), subway stations that look like museums, taking about my money in millions, discussing what animal or plant our food is, Putin jokes, Genghis khan (in drink form, sandwich form or otherwise), hiking in the Gobi, really cute stray dogs, street food, not feeling obligated to change socks and underwear everyday, making sweeping cultural observations and posting them on the internet, 2 litre beer bottles, the kababs in st petersburg, the samosa like things in mongolia, bonaqua and nonfu springs, zakety goose beer, the greasy smell in Mongolian restaurants, the egg pastries at kfc in China, the banya on lake Baikal, having an excuse to eat cup noodles.

Won't :mystery meat(a sandwich shouldn't be an adventure), having to hear about camerons most recent bristol scale reading at breakfast every morning, salmon roe flavoured chips, train showers, yurt showers, all other showers not in an actual shower, slow internet, informal taxis, getting my 5 to 10 from freeze dried packets mixed with my noodles, dealing with units of currency too small to buy anything, pit toilets, public toilets, public toilets that are actually pit toilets-as in the toilet at terminal 5 at st petersburg airport I just used (fewer vaulted glass ceilings more flush toilets? What do you guys think?), having to carry my own tp, having the tp unravel in my bag so that it looks like Im performing some kind of gross magic trick pulling it from bag before I go to the washroom every time, having at least three snorers and one go-getter early riser in my room every night, buying yoghurt instead if milk at the grocery, realizing that the jokes I posted on the internet are less hilarious than i originally thought, horse's milk, the hole in the bottom of my shoe that lets in the dirt and things that smell way too bad to be dirt, bins of used toilet paper beside toilets (even when the toilet is a pit. Like seriously, what are we saving it for somethinge?), lactose free icecream, agonizing between the most delicious and the least 'offensive ' (gastrointestinally speaking) options on the menu (these rarely coincide).

Thanks again for reading and thanks for a great trip Cameron. See you all at Christmas!

PS my flight has been delayed 30 mins now and I think there's something wrong with an engine because someone on a ladder is sticking their head in there. I only have 60 mins to make my connection in Moscow, which requires a trip through customs and immigration so might be signing off here a bit early... Stay tuned!

finish line (cameron)

i'm hanging out in an empty hostel. well, other than staff girl and the girl who started drinking vodka at 11 this morning and has been passed out since 2. it's 5 now. we planned on having a quiet last night, but things escalated real fast, and long story short, i'm in struggle town

at 10:20pm st. petersburg time i fly to moscow, then a 7 hour layover, then fly to dusseldorf, then a 2 hour layover, then fly to vancouver and arrive at 10:10am vancouver time; a very long trip, bookended by daytime, worst case scenario for jet-lag. by the end of this i expect to be not only the mayor of struggle city, but the elected leader of the majority of the municipalities in the metro struggle area.

for now i will write about banya. banya is a russian sauna. it is very hot, and very steamy; usually they are fancy, like a turkish bath, with marble and stuff. but we went to a tiny portable banya on the shore of lake baikal, and it was awesome.

it was a cold, overcast day, and the lake was dark and a bit kicked up by the wind. just before we get in, an englishman runs across the sandy beach and dives into the lake. he was happy when we told him the unlikely function of the little hut we were about to enter. so he joined us, along with our german friend

we alternated between lake and banya, the lake being quite tolerable for a minute or two after being warmed to the core. when you use a lot of water on the rocks it gets extremely hot, it can be hard to breathe

you also beat each other and yourself with bunches of birch branches. and you really give'er too. this is a unique sensation, and it is extremely refreshing somehow. the smell of birch permeates everything. an hour later i could still taste it

when researching this post, i came accross a description of the banya by saint andrew in the 12th century:

I saw the land of the Slavs, and while I was among them, I noticed their wooden bathhouses. They warm them to extreme heat, then undress, and after anointing themselves with tallow, they take young reeds and lash their bodies. They actually lash themselves so violently that they barely escape alive. Then they drench themselves with cold water, and thus are revived. They think nothing of doing this every day, and actually inflict such voluntary torture on themselves. They make of the act not a mere washing but a veritable torment.

what do the proprietors do if you misbehave in a russian sauna? they banya!

but now i pack up to go; Andrew left 5 hours ago; it's been a heck of a trip; i'd probably be a bit more sad if i weren't so darned tired, and the struggle-plane beckons

St Petersurg! (Andrew)

Note: this keyoard is roken. ear with us and take are reading, I ant e othered to opy and paste them all.

Cameron and I took the loal train (as opposed to the faster direct trains we were on efore) from Moscow to St Petersburg. In Russia trains get a numer and the lowest numbers are the est trains. Irkutsk to Moscow we were on 4. This one was 260 AND it made all the stops... so it took 8.5 hours, smelled like cheese the whole way and a Russian kid insisted on jumping on my bed and banging on the wall of the train while I was trying to sleep for a solid portion of the journey.

Moscow is a very intimidating city. The buildings are imposing brick Soviet era strutures and the streets are crowded and full of different kinds of military personel. The tourist attractions have multiple security check points (in the spirit of the quantity of over quality security chekpoint approach we first saw in Beijing), everything is shokingly expensive and there is little english for us gwylos.

St Petersburg, y contrast, has the feel of a friendly European ity. The broad boulevards are wide and tree lined, there is stunning Victorian architecture and anals rissross the ity full of sightseeing boats (reread that if needed, my apologies to our more sensitive readers). The Hermitage was free (eause we're students) and I haven't yet seen even a polieman.

other stuff:

From the small sign at st Basils I learned that St Basil was a 'nude walker ' and a 'fool for god '. Cameron suggested these might be technical terms, ut when pressed on what 'nude walker' might be technial for he was unertain. Feel free to rainstorm in the comments.

We've been drinking a yoghurt drink called 'for men '. It has 2x a bunh of good stuff we ant read ecause apart from the title everything is in cyrillic. One of these good things, we discovered the other day, is chicken . so apparently we've been drinking a lot of innamon apple chicken flavour yoghurt drink. This is potentially related to some anomolous ristol scale readings we've een getting. We'll keep you posted.

It took the combined efforts of 4 sandwich people and probably about 15 minutes to order at suway. Word to the wise, dont even try to mime 'whole grain', you just look ridiculous.

dressing for the weather when you only ring tshirts

1 t-shirt= 1 t-shirt (what are you? an idiot?)

2 t-shirts = sweatshirt

3 t-shirts = rain gear

4 t-shirts =snow gear/way to look uff for the ladies (provided you're wearing 4 nice shirts (4 collars is too many though. At very least alternate popped and not popped)

5 t-shirts = personal floatation device

6= t-shirts = spacesuit? deep sea diving gear? low udget hazmat suit?

7= t-shirts = impossile

Irkutsk to Moscow (Cameron)

Prologue:

"Well the good news is that my back doesn't hurt anymore," said Andrew, returning after a 30 minute sojourn in the dining car, "but the bad news is that I'm really drunk." Without further explination, he climbed into his bunk and passed out for four hours.

Irkutsk to Moscow:

We went to the market in Irkutsk and bought enough vegetables to supply our "5 to 10 a day" for the 4 day train trip to Moscow. But sufficiency of vitamins alone does not a healthy trip make, and unhealthy it was. Which reminds me: dedicated readers may recall that we're both often quite tired. We have arrived at a possible explanation: lack of sleep. Extremes of temperature and humidity, tiny beds and mattresses that simply cannot have been so uncomfortable unintentionally, power snorers, late nights, drunken roommates (our 8 bed dorm was full last night, but at 4:00am I was the only one home!), etc...

(NB: If you are on a Russian train and ask someone for the time, there are four possible answers: the time where you are coming from, the time where you are going, the time where you are, and Moscow time. All Russian trains run on Moscow time.)

We shared our compartment with "Grandma" and "Gramps" (no relation) (alternatively: Mr. and Mrs. Clause; or the moldy oldies). Very early on, Grandma developed a habit of speaking to us in Russian, often and at length. Typically this was with an angry and disapproving tone, but it was occasionally punctured by bouts of good-natured laughter. Grandma also plied us with food, primarily carbohydrates. The powdered mashed potatoes she gave me one afternoon were excellent. Andrew informs me that she would wake him up early each morning by tapping his foot with stale bread (I don't know why I was excluded). On the last morning, she became quite agitated when we slept late and didn't jump down to consume large bags tasteless biscuits and bread, and yogurt that had been left out in the heat for three days.

We had the top bunks, and a certain territoriality quickly developed such that we didn't sit on the bottom bunks, which would have allowed us to use our compartment's table. Thus we spent nearly the entirety of the trip sitting on our beds or standing in the hallway (where we ate and prepared nearly all our meals). Our boredom on the first couple days is probably best illustrated by the following exchange "I'm pretty hungry." "I'm really hungry." "Should we eat?" "No. ... Being hungry is something to do."

But things soon picked up. And not only because Andrew discovered he could use instant noodle bowls to wash his hair. At a late night stop, several women sold dried Omul on the platform. (Omul is a fish that is endemic to Lake Bakial and is eaten a lot in the surrounding areas; based on the way one draws out the "u" when pronouncing the name, we suspect that the Omuuul look something like this.) Two of them (the women, not the Omul) got into a viscious argument which attracted a lot of attention. My Russian is not yet fluent, but as best I can tell, the disagreement was over who had the greatest dried Omul in all of Russia. A mulleted teen looked at me with a sly smile and said "Velcome to Rush-a."

On the second day, I made friends with a middle aged Buryat (related to Mongolian) man, who was very enthusiastic about trying out the little English he knew. He was a coal mining engineer from Northern Siberia, and was wealthy, based the pictures he showed me of his family vacation to Cypress and his Subaru Impreza with rally-car tweaks. He gave me tea, and we ate many spoonfulls of jam made by his mother. He bought us beers and pine nuts from the platform, and when Andrew joined us for lunch, he gave us bread, sausages, vegetables, and homemade salsa. He was very interested in prices of things in Canada and the USA. He showed me videos of him hunting with a Kalashnikov and pictures of him fishing with some sort of fishing-gun (and goggles and a snorkel).

Because most of our time was spent sitting on a small bed or standing in the hallway, by day three we had both developed a bit of back strain. Andrew decided to remedy this by going to the (expensive) dining car to drink a beer and read Jane Austin. We had been to the dining car twice before, and though the food was okay (the borscht was excellent; I haven't had any non-awesome borscht), the service was a bit unusual (the waiter and waitress didn't have uniforms, and mostly sat around smoking and watching DVDs; there were almost no customers).

I found it a bit mysterious when Andrew returned inebriated, and I only got the full story when he woke up several hours later. Apparently he was peer pressured into a rapid succession of vodka toasts by a trio of Siberian coal miners. I'm still not clear on the details, but he was told an exciting tale about a recent fight with a grizzly bear, armed only with a pitchfork (the miner, not the bear). A choking demonstration went a bit far, but other than that it sounds like it was pretty good natured, though things may have taken a turn for the worse after Andrew gave them the slip, based upon circumstantial evidence discovered later.

As Andrew slept I took a walk down the car and noticed that two compartments down a shirtless man lay unconscious on his bed. This was not out of the ordinary, but the large stain around his groin and the fresh blood that drenched his pillow was. Andrew later confirmed that this was one of his mining friends.

Awhile later, one of the miners came and insisted that Andrew and I go back to the dining car. We did, though it took awhile to get in because the door was looked and it took several minutes of knocking and yelling before a fleshy, buxom blond with heavy bags under her eyes let us in.

This situation had deteriorated since Andrew had been there. The restaurant was closed, even though it was 18:00 (Moscow time), and it was still a couple of hours until sunset (local time). Two of the booths had been converted into makeshift beds. Two shirtless miners sat drinking with waiter, waitress (his wife, we learned), and blondy. One of the bottles of vodka was covered in blood, as was the table.

We drank with them for several hours. Miner 2 (they may also have been mechanics or computer programmers or radio transmitter repairmen... we aren't sure) was very keen on calling us his friends, and Miner 1 would occasionally call his wife to help find the English word he needed (while simultaneously groping blondy). Waiter was very inebriated and passed out early on, but Waitress sipped beer and chain-smoked and looked unhappy.

(Fun Fact: Some menthol cigarettes contain a small vial of menthol within the filter which has to be crushed just before the cigarette is smoked to release the delicious menthol flavour/sensation.)

We went to bed at midnight, but were woken at 3:00am (Moscow time, and pitch black local time) when Grandma and Gramps awoke to tell secrets and ghost stories (we can only assume). I got up much later and went back to the dining car to retrieve my shirt. The place was trashed: broken glass, empty bottles, pornography DVDs, blankets, and coins littered the floor. The lights were off and the shades were drawn. It was definitely not open for business. But waiter was diligently guzzling vodka, and aggressively peer-pressured me into an inadvisedly large glass before I could leave. He tracked me down in the hallway 20 minutes later, demanding that I return, and were it not for his very rough state it would have been difficult to resist.

We rolled into Moscow in the early afternoon. Grandma graciously accepted one of our better "British Columbia" pins, but returned minutes later to press a 50 roubles note into my hand.

Moscow! (Andrew)

I would like to start with an apology to the readers. The previous post made a reference to rocky v. As readers were quick to point out, this reference should be attributed to rocky IV. We would like to assure our readers, especially those in Mumbia and Bangalore, that the sudmantfamily blog does not stand for this kind of sloppy journalism. Thank you to the close readers for pointing out this error. We'll try to be better.


After an eventful journey that tested the limits of the travel diet we've been perfecting, (noodles, 'dinner fish', chocolate, vitamin pills and cucumbers), our ability to go without REM sleep (with our cabinmates 'grandma' and 'gramps' telling jokes late into the night and rising at the break of dawn), and raising our pantomime skills to new hieghts (thanks to our Siberian coal miner friends), Cameron and I arrived in Moscow a couple of nights ago.

Our hostel is only a few hundred meters from red square where yesterday there were big celebrations for 'moscow day'. There multiple stages and large numbers of people from the military. Some were dressed up for the occassion but there were also crowds of teenage soldiers that looked like they'd come strait from siberian boot camp. I'm pretty sure some of them were carrying tents on their backs but Cameron thinks they were extra coats.

There were also lots of stands selling food and cheap souvenirs. For some reason pirate hats with blue hair attached are something tourists are supposed to buy. Flags with putin and medvedev are another option, (getting excited Adam and Peter?). We ate salty corn on the cob and had sandwiches from another stall. They were disappointing.

Today we're going back to Red Square to visit St. Basil's and some other churches.

Some other findings :

Produce is expensive and isn't of very high quality. Even at the shi shi grocery store we've been shopping at the apples are bruised and cost as much as 7 dollars a kg. Some other produce seems to be less expensive however.

I want to reiterate how popular mullets are in Russia. We're not even in Siberia anymore! Also, I was under the impression that once you went with the mullet you had basically made all the hair styling decisions you could make. Boy did I have that wrong. This trip has been really culturally enlightening for me.

Russia is a nation of sharpshooters. This game where you shoot at cans or minature soldiers with a pellet gun seems to be pretty common-and its fun for the whole family!

You know who's a big hit? Bruce Willis. I've seen his face on two billboards, one advertising a bank and another advertising hunting gear. Aparting Bruce is a versatile guy when it comes to advertising.

Putin is co-opting Walker Texas Ranger jokes. I heard 'Putin can make two sticks out of a fire' yesterday.

As Cameron will be elaborating on, we had a few drinks with three shirtless tattooed coal miners (or possibly mechanics) on the train. For future reference, should you find yourself in a similar situation, here are some topics of conversation/chirades that will go over well:

Grizzly bears
Fishing
Big dogs
Russia!
Hunting with ak47
Coal mine
Punching (demonstrate on your neighbor)
Choking technique (demonstrate on a foreigner)

Ask Cameron to mime lawyer (or 'advocate'). He's got it down. The 'intellectual property rights ' specialty remains a challenge however. This term is not familiar in China, Mongolia or Russia.

Nikita's Homestead on Lake Baikal (Andrew)

As I write this Im sitting in the dining hall of nikita's hostel on the edge of lake Baikal. The building reminds me of a swiss ski chalet. Everything is made of wood and the walls have old photos of a snowy lake baikal and a braid of fake corn hang underneath some antlers . An elderly Russian man is playing the piano and outside it is pouring rain. It is very cosy inside though, everyone has big cups of tea and there are some kittens huddled around one of the wooden pillars. There's a faint, but unmistakable, odor of omul, Baikal 'salmon', (but its more like a Herring).

Nikitas has about 30 closely built wooden buildings. Some look better suited for a european ski town, others look like wild west saloons. All the pillars have smiling faces carved into them and the pathways between buildings are edged with sunflowers. its a bit of a Potemkin village (is that a term i should avoid?), but its really nice.

The scenery here reminds me of newfoundland. There are small pine trees in places but most of the land is rolling green hills and the coast is very rocky.

The people here in the dining hall make a good cross section of the kind of people who do the transsiberian. There seem to be two kinds travellers.

Young people, sometimes travelling solo, sometimes in twos, in their 20s or early 30s are one group. You often hear these people talking about what they 'used' to do. For example Im sitting behind four Americans , two travelling solo and a couple. The couple were lawyers in DC, another guy used to do mergers in New York and the fourth was an IT specialist. These are the same people who talk about "trying to get into Tibet" when you're in China but they're hardly hippies. They're all wearing gortex and have digital slr cameras. Somehow I think the guy currently complaining about the "high ping" he's getting from the wireless might still have mergers in his future.

Then there are older european couples, pairs of 'Ritas' only less adventurous. Some of these couples are really roughing it, as Rita is. Others are having quite a relaxing time. At Nitika's, for example, there is a free 'banya' (traditional sauna), and a pay one where you get massages. There's also one Cameron and I found a ways up the beach, but I'll save that for another post.

other stuff:

People love Putin. You can even buy creepy cult of Putin souvenirs like statues and fridge magnets that show Putin at one angle and Medvedev at another angle. 'To Putin" goes over big when you're drinking with the locals.

The military fatigues with sandals look is really popular, as are track suits, for men. Men wear their hair in a either a mullet or buzz cut. Women wear high heels at the grorcery store and smoke a lot. I constantly feel like Im on the set of Rocky V.

Hitchhikers have it even better here than in Mongolia. In Cameron's post on the 16 person van trip he failed to mention that at least one person was a hitchhiker. At one point the van even stopped and waited (engine running) while our hitchhiker friend ran into a fish store.

An excerpt from the book of short stories im going to write after our journey, 'adventures on the bristol scale '(working title), . This is from 'Cameron finds tp rock'


Cameron galloped into the lake laughing and spashing the water high into the air. "The waters of lake Baikal " Cameron yelled to Andrew, drawing cupped hands to his lips and drinking deeply, "Is so clean and so clear..that swimmers are said to get vertigo ". Unfortunately for Cameron, it is also said (and not just in russia) that people who drink near 'tp rock '(or poo rock as it has sometimes been called) get very ill.

Is this another peanut fiasco? Will this Cameron character ever catch a break? I guess we'll both have to wait for the full version.


In closing.. Google analytics is showing a sustained spike in readership coming from india, so we'd like to give a special shout out to our readers in Bangalore and Mumbia. Keep it real guys.

Sushi, sumo wrestling, deflationary pressure, Hiro Hito, Pokemon! Let's see if we can't up those numbers from Japan Google!

Road to Olkhon Island (Cameron)

Russia does not have a reputation for exceptional efficiency, but our experience taking the bus/ferry from Irkutsk to Olkhon Island (320 km) taught us otherwise.

For instance, if you have a van that could safely seat 9, why not pack it with 15 seats, and 16 passengers? Removing seatbelts not only improves mileage, it boosts your top speed! While fuelling up, who has time to turn off the engine? And you may as well multi-task and take your smoke break while manning the pump. When a large, heavy, structural-looking piece falls from the ceiling, just keep driving, it probably isn't necessary to support the 700 pounds of luggage on the roof. To save time later, continue at full speed ahead while you turn around to look for the large hunting knife that was tucked into the structural-looking piece and is now somewhere among your passengers. Dead horse on the road? Just carefully swerve around it; let nature run its course.

In a store in small town, a shirtless Russian guy gave us a rouble when we were one short. He gave us a ride back to our hostel too, and turned to talk to us throughout the short drive. We felt it would be rude to point out he was driving on the wrong side of the road... but the wheel was on the wrong side of the car, so maybe this corrects things somehow? He was a engineering student from Saghalien Island, majoring in road safety.

How we get our dinner here on Saturna

Trans-Siberian Stand-up with Adam

Did you guys find any pancakes on your trip so far?

I hear the mongolians make a great Ulan pancake "Bator"....

Did you guys say the mutton dishes were flavoured well or were they a little ..."mumuttonous"..

When the train at the russian border was taking too long, did you guys tell the driver to "quit Stalin!" ??

When you spoke too loud on your trip in the Gobi, did anyone tell you to quit Yakin'?

...I'll be here all night...

Diet (Cameron)

As of the first day of this trip, I had been a vegetarian (and recently a pescitarian) for 1,429 days. I decided that during the trip, I would temporarily revert to meat eating.

On our first day in Beijing, Andrew's friend Mora took us out for Peking Duck: famous, ancient, and complicated to make (you can read about it here). It suffices to say that it's extremely fatty, and that you mostly eat the skin. This was accompanied by two dozen duck hearts, and duck livers in salt water. I decided that coconut milk would be a light, cool antidote to the fatty entry, but it was only after my fourth can that I realized each one had more than 20 grams of saturated fat.

And so began the second great journey that I have been undertaking this summer: an exploration of the remotest corners of the Bristol Stool Scale.

I generally enjoyed the food on our wilderness excursions in Mongolia, even the monotony didn't get to me. Mutton (we think? it was very gristly sometimes), rice, and potatoes dominated. Andrew quickly caught on and scored a perfect prediction one night: "I bet we're having rice and potatoes, with little bits of mystery meat." We are still unsure what the mystery meat was, but we initially suspect egg or lung, and are now leaning heavily towards lung.

When a meal was being prepared by a host family, and someone said to another: "дэлгүүр нь Монгол улсын нийслэл УБ хот болон бусад аймагт төлөөлөгч болох хүсэлтэй иргэн, аж ахуйн нэгжтэй хамтран ажиллана!!!!" We would speculate as to possible meanings: "You call this pastry flaky?! Make it again! Decant the Merlot, we must let it breath. And you, keep beating those egg whites, I want that Pavlova so light that it's on the verge of floating away."

We were overjoyed to find that peanuts were available in Mongolia. However on the train I ate aBad Peanut. This was a profoundly traumatizing experience, and I will speak no further of it.

In Ulan-Bator, we were regulars at the Loving Hut (the vegan restaurant, not the brothel). We always enjoyed watching "Supreme Master TV .com". It broadcasts multi-faith new age prayers, and the screen is perpetually dominated by a technicolour array of subtitles in no less than 18 languages.

In Irkutsk, an significant information asymmetry has been remedied: all restaurant menus provide the weights of each item and sometimes even a breakdown of the sub-items (e.g. the salad is 140 grams and the dressing is 40 grams).

We are just about to take a bus/ferry to a little island on a big lake for three nights. All meals are included, but the proprietor is much better known for his table tennis skills (for real) than his ability to procure fresh ingredients (other than fish). What island? What Lake? Will Cameron and Andrew survive Nikita's concoctions? Find out next week! Exclusively here on the Sudmant Family Blog!

Some final thoughts on Mongolia (Andrew)

I think grocery stores are one of the best ways to really get a sense of a place. In UB there are plastic bags of horse milk "sealed" with twist ties or a knot in the plastic. Fruits and vegetables are definitely a luxury. The dairy section in the state grocery store dwarfs the produce section by at least 3 times and there isn't much in the way of variety-I didn't see anything other than potatoes, onions, apples, cabbages and tomatoes. To make up for this vitamin drinks are all the rage. One of the most popular is 'seabuckthorn' juice made from some sort of nettle. 90% of seabuckthorn farming is in China but we didn't encounter any juice there. In the dairy section there were at least a dozen different flavours of yoghurt drink in 3 or 4 different fat contents and 3 or 4 different sizes and with the choice three different animal sources and sometimes even combinations, (you do the math) (after doing the math I realize this number is unreasonable large, pending translation horse yoghurt may or may not exist. For the sake of the post lets just say it does.)

Interestingly, restaurants in UB have more exotic things like squash at the vegan restaurant and bock choy in a Vietnamese restaurant. This fits with impression of modern Mongolia we got; there is evidence of progress all around, but so far the benefits seem to have settled disproportionately on a privileged few (who are at the restaurants), while for the masses life has changed little so far.

On our trip through the Gobi we visited a number of very small grocers in small towns. Generally the store would be a room in someone's house and it took me the entire trip to figure out that the next room was not a casual carpet store filled with knick knacks. Commonly several houses in a row would have almost identical stores. Almost everything in these stores was packaged and the offerings were not very exciting-peanuts, old potatoes, chips-the same stuff you might find in a corner store in Canada. Some things were interesting though. By volume, beer was more expensive than vodka and was probably not far from the price you would expect in Canada. I never figured out who was buying beer (apart from foreigners who don't know how to use their money..) Also, prices are often not listed, so that you had to ask the store owner, but I never saw bargaining..

some other thoughts:

Forget your foui gra and fancy free range mennonite chicken. When in Russia get the 'oppressed chicken with baked tomatoes'. Delicious.

I think Cam might be in vegetarianism withdrawal. Yesterday he calculated how many days he was vegetarian for. Between the duck hearts in China, the mystery gristle in Mongolia and the 'oppressed chicken' here in Russia it might be time to move on Cam. Just sayin'.

Mongolian's have very smart haircuts. Is anyone else wondering if anyone ever goes into the salon and says, "Modern forward thinking western business culture in the front please. Genghhis Khan in the back." Here's hoping.

The Mongolian language sounds like when Gandalf catches the moth in Lord of the Rings and talks to it in moth language. I'm well aware this comment will be understood by a total of one reader.. unless...! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnidHtNzK-0 Thanks Youtube. (Cameron adds: it also sounds like Parseltongue, if that does the trick for you.) I'd say we're at a conversational level at this point. (Unfortunately I'll probably regress over my time in the UK, expect 'hello', 'thank you', 'delicious' and 'cheers!' when you see me next). Scratch that, I've forgotten 'delicious'.

Irkutsk (Cameron)

We are in Irkutsk, the Paris of Siberia. Like Paris, it's a great walking city, with beautiful architecture, wide boulevards, and plenty of people out on warm summer evenings. Unlike Paris, it was founded as a Cossack garrison to subdue the indigenous Buryat population (closely related to the Mongolians) .

At the central intersection of Karl Marx Rd. and Lenin St. stands a large bronze statute of the latter. Speakers play music; we enjoyed an alto-sax rendition of Pachelbel's Canon. Just down the street there is a recently (and controversially) erected statute of White Army commander Admiral Kolchak (executed by the Bolsheviks during the civil war).

We arrived yesterday on the overnight train from Ulan-Bator. We shared our four bed compartment with two girls on scholarship to study medicine in Moscow. The neighbouring compartment was filled with the same. Most spoke decent English and were friendly and outgoing.

The train bathrooms were locked during the four hours at the Russian border, but at hour three (about 1:30am), the doors were opened and we were permitted to mill around the platform. I didn't want to pay 8 roubles to use the overburdened bathroom, so with the help of a lanky Mongolian boy on scholarship to finish high school in Ukraine, I found a sufficiently secluded corner. This seemed to spark further subversive behaviour, as a parade of others quickly caught on and followed our lead.

Knackerd (Cameron)

Throughout the trip we have been almost perpetually knackered. This is probably because of our frenetic itinerary, but in Ulan-Bator the elevation must have contributed too. UB is at 4,300 feet, that's over fourteen football fields high.

Dharma Bums

So, I know Cameron and Andrew have been regaling us with some amazing stories from the far East, but I thought I'd quickly interject to update everyone on my own little adventure down the coast of the good old USA! Carlton (the name I have given to our 1988 Chevy getaway van), and my friend James and I began our journey driving through Oregon; the coastal highway is amazing with its huge beaches, massive waves, stacks, and weathered coastal formations. The drive along highway 101 was lovely, however, we faced the problem of running into quite a few crowded populated areas with drive-in camping, RV parks, cabins, and all that touristy jazz. Following the Dharma Bums ideal, this just wouldn't do; so we kept driving, and as the 101 turned inland for a while we found some random roads going towards the coast again. Very luckily we came across a logging-type road that led to a dead end gravel parking lot right on the beach, which was completely isolated for miles in both directions. This first epic beach made for excellent bonfires, acoustic guitar playing with hair in wind, and morning yoga on warm, flat tombolos.

Another day, we found another epic isolated beach, but this one was only accessible through a 5 or so mile hike through the woods. The formations on this beach were rather different, with slightly grainier sand, and huge cliffs made of sandy material that easily eroded (I felt it necessary to inscribe some profound poetry and philosophy quotes on these). At night, the stars on this beach were the most phenomenal I'd ever seen .

The fun down oregon coast continued without a dime having been spent on accommodation, and the occasional warm river or lake providing for excellent bathing. We eventually made it to the Redwoods in Northern California where we hiked in to tall trees grove, home of the world's largest trees, and camped along a creek beneath towering Redwoods and Sequoias. It's probably a terrible thing to say, but I was almost reminded of some sort of disneyland fairy tale forest when walking around the trees which looked unreal with up to 30 foot diameters and gnarly, thick bark. Highlights included sitting in a warm creek watching a family of deer watching me, and meditating at dusk on a massive fallen redwood beneath a 320 foot sequoia tree.

Our time down the coast and in the redwoods lasted about 6 days; when Carlton began showing some signs of fatigue (stalling several times on the highway and telling us he had a 3/4 tank of gas when he was really empty), we decided to head North again. Portland seemed nice, but we felt overwhelmed by the bustle of the city and were forced to instead drive to mount St. Helens that same night. Now home, I'd call our whole journey a great success. A big thanks goes out to Carlton for chuggin' it all the way home and fighting through the occasional adversity. Another thanks to Jack Kerouac for reminding us to stay spontaneous, mindful of the present, and appreciative of the most important things.

"all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures."

-Jack Kerouac

Some Observations (Andrew)

The garbage trucks sound like ice cream trucks. As you can imagine this has been an ongoing source of frustration. That said, Cameron and I noticed that approximately 1 in 2 manhole covers has been removed and the hole filled up with garbage, so maybe the garbage truck is something to get excited about.

Gengkhis Khan (or Chenggis Khan as he's called here), is everywhere. He's on every bill, from the 50 (which is like 2 cents) to the 20,000, to vodka, on which he's referred to as "the man of the millennium". Unfortunately we've been unable to up anything to "Gengkhis Khan size" yet (as in, "Please Gengkhis Khan size my dumping order"). We'll keep trying.



mutton, rice and potatoes are the major players, and sometimes the only players, in most Mongolian dishes. The food is quite good however. With the exception of some pizza we had from a restaurant with "American Pizza technology" that didn't sit very well, we've both been quite happy. Ulaan Baator also has quite a lot of foreign food and a number of vegan restaurants.

Evidence of Mongolia's mining boom is everywhere. On the way in from the airport there are rows and rows of billboards, all in English, advertising, "precision drilling", giant dump trucks and different kinds of steel cable. In the newspaper, which has a version translated to English, literally three-quarters of articles were either about mines, mining or infrastructure for mines and there are "Business", "Economics", and "Finance" sections (in a 5 page paper!). Within a 50 or 60km radius from Ulaan Bataar there are dozens of very small open pit mines. Moosh told us they were mining building materials, whatever that may be.

What do purple pine cones, horse's milk, bathroom scales and landline telephones have in common? Those are things people sell on the side of the street. The pine cones seem to be some kind of seasonal treat but they are extremely labour intensive to eat and make your hands really sicky. Given a choice between the pine cone and the milk, however, definitely go for the pine cone. The milk comes in large metal containers and is served in a recycled bottle. Thirsty? The milk also has to be mixed constantly since it has no processing whatsoever, and often has small lumpy bits in it. It is also probably pretty warm from sitting in the sun all day. The scales are presumably for checking your weight (and look like any old bathroom scale). The landline telephones seem to have cellphone capabilities. We haven't figured that one out yet.

How do you tell a Mongolian person from a Chinese person? (this sounds like its going in a bad direction but trust me on this one). See if they drink milk. Mongolian's are not lactose intolerant. In fact horse's milk is particularly high in lactose and horses need to be milked 6x per day, so the people outside Ulaan Baatar probably have super human lactose tolerance. In the event the 'milk test' is inconclusive Mongolian people also look different than Chinese people (as Cameron noted earlier). You can use the 'milk test' to be rigorous.

Breakthrough! (Cameron)

We are not yet fluent in Mongolian, but both the driver and I understood the universal language of slapstick comedy when Andrew caught his hand in the automatic window.

Beyond Ulan-Bator (Cameron)

1) There are some obvious things to prepare for on a seven day trip to the Gobi (dehydration, camel attack, etc.), but torrential rainfall did not make our list. We hiked across a swamp to climb the sand dunes, but on the way back the water level had risen substantially resulting in a challenging crossing. When we went to the dunes again the next morning on camels, they struggled not to slip in the mud.

2) Throughout our Gobi trip, we would periodically stop at general stores in small towns. These stores were all pretty much identical in terms of the products they sold (and the plastic "I <3 NY" bags they provided). We would buy water, gum, candies, peanuts, and bland pieces of dense bread which tasted vaguely of glazed donuts. We would always offer some to Oggy and Moosh, and they never refused. But we suspect that this was culturally mandated; Oggy once took only two peanuts, one for her and one for Moosh.

3) We visited a family and were given a wide variety of dairy products. Our best guesses as to what we consumed are: mares milk, goat curd, goat/sheep cream, and fermented mares milk. The mares milk was incredibly sour (and a powerful laxative according to the internet). We had trouble getting it down, yet our bowl was continuously refilled so we ended up drinking quite a lot of it. The curd was similarly strong and sour. I found the cream and fermented milk quite inoffensive, other than the odour.

3) We were lucky to come across a horse race that some rich families had organized. The race was 20km, and the jockeys were all young children, mostly boys, but some girls. The youngest jockey was three. They started from a congregation of cars and horses in an unpopulated area in the steppes, and we waited until they returned some time later. Some of the horses returned with no riders. Chaperones rode alongside on dirt bikes.

4) We stayed for one night in a ger in Dalanzadgad, a town of 17,000 people, 540km south of Ulan-Bator. There were a few permanent buildings, but most people lived in gers. In urban areas, gers are in rectangular, fenced lots (fencing is made of almost anything: wood, corrugated metal, bricks, unrolled barrel sides). A standard lot is about 7 by 20 meters.

We heeded Oggy's warnings, but nonetheless decided to venture outside the safety of our lot (the "green zone"). There were numerous playgrounds (basketball hoops and strange exercise devices were the main features), and all of them were packed with children. We stopped at one and I juggled a bit (a universal language), and the kids seemed happy with this. I had to turn down requests to juggle tiny, unperturbed puppies.

On our way back, a couple of guys were up to no good, and started making trouble in the neighborhood. After an suspicious suggestion to take out a camera for a picture was rejected, one of them raised a fist only to be held back by his compatriot. They followed us as we walked home. My concern that Gordon Ramsey and Julia Child would have to get involved (my right and left fists) was dissolved when we neared the green zone and Moosh saw what was going on and chased them down the street. One of them lost his sandals. This lent further to Moosh's superhuman image, not the least of which because Andrew's sub 100 pound estimate of Moosh's weight (based on a drunken piggyback ride).

5) Mongolian horses are very small, prompting Andrew to wonder who would be riding whom. The saddles are small and the stirrups are high, so there is plenty of groin, thigh, knee, calf, and ankle pain. This was not helped by our guide's great fondness of convincing our horses to canter.

Our second equestrian excursion was in Terelj National Park. The horses did not seem happy and proved difficult to control for our 11 year old guide, despite the whippings he generously provided. Not far from camp, a Korean girl was tossed over the front of her horse, and though uninjured, she decided she was now afraid of horses. In the commotion, the other two girls couldn't prevent their horses from trotting back home; both decided this was for the best. Our young guide sorted this out while Andrew and I sat on our calmly grazing animals. He returned at a gallop, and communicated his impatience by whipping my horse square in the face.

6) The Gobi trip was awesome, and the rain actually made it better: we saw lightning and rainbows (and double rainbows), and drove through rivers and mud. We saw thousands and thousands of cows, camels, sheep, goats, and horses (it is very satisfying to see a big herd of horses freely galloping across the steppes). We saw hawks, vultures, Jerboa, and lots of interesting insects. The sand dunes were magnificent, as were the rocky hills we climbed. We got to crawl through a 70 meter cave, which felt somewhat unsafe because it was through a clay hill and there were large chunks of the ceiling which had fallen off, leaving only small places to squirm through (Oggy joined us, yet remained improbably put together, as she was for the whole trip). The sky was huge and in some places it was very flat so the horizon was wavy in the heat in all directions.

Our Trip to the Gobi (Andrew)

Cameron and I just returned from a week long trip to Gobi. It was truly awesome. We went days seeing only the occasional herd of goats or distant Ger to remind us that people were around and the scenery was breathtaking. To set the scene here are the characters we traveled with:


Mount Zorgol, the mountain you climb to destroy the one ring to rule , a mountain in the Altai Range north of the Gobi

Rita: a 69 year French-Canadian old double knee replacement retiree who's been backpacking the world for most of the last six years. Rita is an inspiration. Toilets or no toilets she wanted to see the Gobi. Next up she heads to China. Unfortunately we didn't have good news for her on the toilet front.

Chris: a 27 year old english teacher originally for the UK currently living in Japan. Chris taught Cameron and I about the UK. When someone is being annoying or easily offended they are being "Larry". 'Knacked' is tired. Chips are 'crisps' and fries are 'chips'. Chris also had a very useful and amusing Mongolian language guide which included:

"How old is your daughter"
"Your family has many animals"
"I like meat"
and
"My leg is broken"

unfortunately we didn't get to use as many of these as we would have liked.

Cameron: see 10 of the last 12 posts (or recall that he's your son, brother and/or canim lake camping companion)

Andrew: see 2 of the last 12 posts or see the note on Cameron.

"Oggy": Our 22 year old female Mongolian cook and guide. The vast majority of our interaction with Oggy came during meals, when we said "thank you" and made vigorous efforts to show how delicious we thought her food was. Towards the end of the trip she also started making jokes like, "we camp here tonight!", when we'd been waiting in the middle of nowhere to change a popped tire, or "lunch!" when I showed her a lizard I had caught. Cameron and I hypothesize that her role as "guide" was more for the driver's benefit than the guests since we we're pretty sure our driver would have gone crazy with no one to talk to during the 16 hour days of driving and car repair. That said, if Moosh had gone crazy its hard to say if we would have noticed.

Moosh: our 55 year old driver. Moosh is a pretty amazing guy. We would wake each morning to find him under the van or sifting through the jerry can of random parts he carried and fall asleep to the same. Our vehicle was at least 30 year old by my estimation, but that number alone doesn't do justice to the "blueberry". I'm not sure, for example, how far you have to go back to find a North American car who's oil gauge is a plastic jar sticking out of the dash. What the 'blueberry' may have lacked in "modern technology" or "western safety standards" however, Moosh made up for in sheer persistence. At our first tire change I went for a jog down the road after a few hours of waiting and found one of the bolts that had fallen off the wheel casing. Moosh treated it like a "piece of treasure" (Rita). We were back no the road in no time.

In addition to driving a van, Moosh is also a doctor, once had some role in Monglian politics and raced horses in his youth. Its hard to verify these claims but I think they are entirely possible. I've never seen anyone as resourceful at patching a "made in USSR" tire, as certain of his direction while driving in a rainstorm that obliterates the road and obscures all landmarks or as ferocious at scaring away unwanted young Mongolian men during our "urban ger" experience. And after 8 hours on the "road" and three hours under the car beside the road, Moosh still managed to have a glass of Chenggis vodka (read Genghkis), or 5, and sing songs with the locals until he needed to be carried to his bed in the trunk of the "blueberry".

some memorable Moosh quotes:

on the condition of our vehicle:
"brakes very good today! yesterday brakes verry bad"
on driving in Mongolia during the winter:
"wintertime? sleep only 1/2 hour. Sleep 1 hour? Engine verry cold. Road home 1500km. Sometimes fall asleep. Sometimes lose road. Verry dangerous!"
on working in Mongolia during the Communist era:
"doctor, no pay well. Drive car with pig skins to Russia, buy new car in one year!"

other notes:

We will no longer be giving away the Canadian Kite. Cameron took it for a test fly the other day and it got caught in a tree. How did it get caught in a tree in a country that is almost entirely grassland? You'll have to ask Cameron.

Guess who else is on the transiberian? Kim Jong Il! In his armoured train no less. Apparently he's afraid of flying.

Beijing to Ulan-Bator in Car #1 (Cameron)

We uneventfully caught our 7:47am train to Ulan-Bator (a 30 hour trip). But it didn't say anywhere on our ticket that we were booked in the unofficial shirts-off car (aka: "train casual"). Most of our car-mates appeared to be from the Chinese army's airborne division, and shirt removal was the order of the day. Things were a bit different down in first class Car #6, where faux mahogany and air conditioning were clearly worth 2.5 times the "hard sleeper" price.

We scored a four bed berth for just the two of us, and were very comfortable. There was plenty of room for sit ups and squats, and to enjoy "milk + juice" drink and "jujube paste" filled sesame cakes.

We moved through rocky mountains to depressing industrial towns to spectacular grasslands and clear blue skies. Hundreds of windmills turned in the distance. In the middle of nowhere we passed a convoy of maybe 100 Chinese army vehicles: trucks, tanks, and large artillery.

In the dining car, the waitress immediately started unloading random dishes onto our table until we said stop. When the chef walked through the car 40 minutes later, everyone burst into applause.

We entered the Gobi Desert, and almost immediately ran into the middle of a sandstorm. Berths with windows open were sprayed with sand, and everywhere else the air was misty yellow and smelled like the beach.

At 9:00pm we reached the Chinese border town of Erlian. Customs checks were cursory and friendly, but we had to wait 3 hours while the chassis was switched to the non-standard Russian/Mongolian gauge. (The rails are a bit further (or closer?) apart; this was by design, to hinder foreign invasion.)

We were allowed to leave the train. On the platform, loudspeakers broadcast imperial marches, classical music, and Auld Lang Syne. We bought food from the platform grocery store: instant noodles, water, beer, oranges, and dried "California plun" (we passed on the tinned "dinner fish").

When we slowly rolled into Mongolia at midnight, soldiers with AK-47's stood at 10 meter intervals and saluted us. A Cocker-Spaniel drug sniffer scampered through each car.

Mongolia is much less humid than Beijing, but we didn't see the car thermometer go below 29 degrees. So I'm sure you're wondering: "How many large, thick, woollen blankets were they given in order to keep warm?" Eight.

The People's Living Room (Cameron)

We did not see any single detached homes in Beijing. Apartments are tiny, and we speculate that this explains the large numbers of people just hanging out in random places all over the city: it's nicer than sitting alone in a bleak little room. (Evidently the internet hasn't caught on in a big way for everyone yet.)

Old men play Chinese chess, young men play cards. Children learn calligraphy with huge brushes, dipped in water and applied to dusty sidewalks. But many people just sit and talk, or even sit alone.

We ran into more than one outdoor karaoke party. A kind of hacky sack game involving a heavily weighted and oversized badminton birdie is quite popular. Public parks have inscrutable exercise devices, and seem to be used more for group tai chi.

Near the centre of town is Houhai Lake, about 1km in circumference and totally surrounded by bars. This begs the question: How many old men were swimming in the lake at midnight last Friday? About 25. Most of them were tightly clustered, perhaps to avoid being struck by the dozens of small boats providing romantic cruses.

Public washrooms abound, especially in poor areas. We suspect that a lot of people don't have plumbing, so these are the communal facilities. I used one once, and it wasn't that bad.

Most people are far from wealthy, but they seem happy, and there is a palpable joie de vivre that I don't see at home. We had many smiles, and could get help when we needed it. One woman went to inexplicable lengths to ensure that we would get off at the right bus stop to visit the Summer Palace. A cab driver bought me a popsicle and gave me a big hug. A security guard shook my hand instead of patting me down. At least a dozen people have taken pictures with us.

I'm sad to leave Beijing. During my travels in Europe I was always surprized how quickly I could become attached to a place, and the same is true here. We know our way around, can say a few words, and are subway and cab experts. We're old hands at the hostel, and know the staff at our favourite restaurant down the street. Bye bye Beijing, I'll miss you.

Ten Assorted Observations in Ulan-Bator (Cameron)

1) The smog here is barley noticeable compared to Beijing, but some people still wear masks. One woman had a mask over her nose and a cigarette in her mouth. Penny wise pound foolish I say.

2) Cars drive on the right side of the street, but about 65% of vehicles have the steering wheel on the right side. We don't know why this is.

3) I was a bit concerned that this observation was inappropriate on a family blog, but Andrew assured me that since Adam is now 21, it's probably okay: By my scale, the histogram of female attractiveness here is not particularly notable with respect to it's mean or median, but it has a heck of a fat tail (no pun intended). If I learned anything from the Black Swan (the economics book, not the ballet movie), it means there may well exist a girl in Mongolia with a catastrophic level of beauty. I'm not sure of the implications for investing.

4) We did calisthenics in a little park surrounded by crumbling apartment buildings, and the children playing were very friendly. Earlier, we unsuccessfully attempted to join a 3 on 3 basketball tournament with boys in their teens and twenties, but nobody was helpful. (We've noticed that all youth wear popped collars and are unfriendly; we're not sure which way the causality runs.)

5) The economy seems vibrant. There are only a couple nice looking office and apartment buildings, but there are cranes everywhere, and more than a few nice cars (we were picked up from the train station by a new Hyundai Tuscon).

6) There are an enormous number of banks. This may be (in part) because the highest denomination of bill (20,000 Tögrög) is worth only about $16 Canadian, and the ATM's have low withdraw limits. We've been to the bank 3 times in 24 hours.

7) Our hostel is the main one in UB, and most of the guests are pretty hardcore. There seems to be a strong aversion to air travel. A guy from Poland has been overland from Poland down to Capetown, and across by boat to Asia. A British guy has been travelling for 20 months without leaving the ground.

8) The food here is excellent, and there is a lot of variety. Our first night I had a New York Steak at an Irish Pub. We went to "Berlin Burger" for lunch. It's the only chain of fast food restaurants in UB. When we ordered burgers, they took them from under the counter and microwaved them. We went to the "Love Hut" vegan restaurant for dinner. It was fabulous; better than the Naam.

9) There is clearly more poverty here than in Beijing, and it definitely feels less safe. We are constantly warned about pickpockets, and not to stay out past midnight. An man called us from a distance, gesturing to a huge gash on his arm and smiling. We weren't overly curious. Some stores have security guards. They wear black t-shirts with "SECURITY" silk-screened on the back, and carry handguns.

10) Andrew has been wearing the same pair of socks since August 1. Just sayin'.

Meta Post (Cameron)

We're in Mongolia now and will be going on a couple trips to the wilderness, so posting will be limited.

Also, we have more material from Beijing which will be added later.

Also, things may be added out of order.

Also, we're taking lots of pictures, but we'll probably organize and post them at the end of the trip; it's a bit too much work for now.

Fools, Money, and Lessons in Negotiation: A Trip to the Beijing Silk Market (Cameron)

The global economy is 64 trillion dollars.

In 7.6 billion years, the sun will have run out of hydrogen to fuse, and will have consequently expanded dramatically. The earth's orbit will be decayed due to tidal drag. The combination of these effects will cause the earth to be enveloped by the sun.

The second law of thermodynamics guarantees that the entropy of the universe will continuously increase, reducing the amount of usable energy available until no life is even theoretically possible.

So really, what's RMB 1800 ($276 CAD) in the grand scheme of things?

A large sign proudly proclaims that the Beijing Silk Market is "The most visited market in Beijing by foreigners!" This is not necessarily a good thing (from a foreigner's perspective). At this point I'm relatively sure there is no actual silk in the Silk Market, and the only thing that's even remotely silky is the silky smooth bargaining skills of the sales girls.

The primary negotiating tactic is displaying a wide range of emotions. My favourite is the profound shock when you first name your price (never more than 15% of the price they start with); it's like you just threw their dog off a building. (Lots of people have small dogs as pets, but according to the China Daily US Edition, dog theft is a growing problem. Dogs are expensive to raise, so restaurants buy stolen ones.)

As Andrew mentioned, we did end up buying suits. In our defense, out of all the people who get ripped off buying a suit, we must have been on the low end ($92 each). It would have been better if we got mascot costumes, which judging from the colorful feathers which unintentionally festooned our completed suits, must have been the primary expertise of the manufacturing facility (which I've dubbed Rumplestilknskinland).

During the negotiations we were keenly aware of reservation price and anchoring issues, and I learned from Andrew the "bargain up quantity, not down price" technique, which he used to great success on a non-suit purchase. But as Andrew noted, information asymmetry was our undoing.

We're planning on wearing them while attempting to sneak onto the first class car when we cross Siberia, so it's not a total loss.

Some Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Forbidden City (Cameron)

The Forbidden City, in the centre of Beijing, is the largest and best preserved cluster of ancient buildings in China. Ironically named, throngs of people swarm the grounds every day. To mitigate traffic issues, as of last month one can only enter through the south entrance, and exit through the north. We did not know this, so we walked to the north side, precipitating an eventful journey to the south.

Two men with bicycle rickshaws offered to take us to the south entrance: "How much?", "Three", "Three?", "Three", holds up three fingers,holds up three fingers.

As we rode, I started to calculate how much these men earned. Three is about 50 cents; maybe 15 minutes per round trip; 2 dollars per hour? If business is steady? This seemed a bit low, but the mystery was quickly resolved.

We turned down a narrow, deserted alley and stopped. "We're here" they said. It didn't look like we were there, but I had two 5's ready, so I offered them. "No no no" they said, and took out laminated cards which showed the price as being 300 (about $50). I dropped the 5's on the seat. "You said it was 3" we said. "300" one demanded, holding out three fingers and counting them "one two three", then touching his two closed knuckles "zero, zero" (think a minute about how implausible this counting scheme is).

Andrew and I had been pumping iron on the roof of the hostel the night before, and I was kind of rubbed the wrong way by the trickery and intimidation, so I decided to get a bit angry. We had a vigorous debate. These were my submissions (abridged):

"You said 3. If you wanted 300, say 300 at the start. You lied."

Eventually they gave up and left, but not before one of them spat on me, twice. This is not as bad as it sounds. When it's 35 degrees, 80% humidity, and the smog is so bad it blots out the sun, after 30 minutes outside one gets kinda gross. (We often found ourselves saying, "Did someone spill something on this table?" only to realize that it was our own putrid forearms.) So the spit was more of a gentle cooling mist than anything else. Nonetheless, it's an unfortunate habit for someone in the service industry.

At the end of the alley, a group of small children (maybe 3, 4, and 5, and a 14 year old minder) had observed the incident with interest. They were smiling when we walked passed, so we stopped and gave them Canada pins and Canadian pennies. They were really excited about this, and it was a very nice moment.

(We've hypothesized that receptiveness to and appreciation for pins and pennies is a monotonic decreasing function of income. A sad looking little boy on a crowded bus starred at us in our cab while waiting at a long red light. Andrew practically climbed out of the window to give him a pin, and he seemed very happy about this. My attempt to give a pin to a little girl in a KFC (the egg tarts are spectacular) was swiftly rebuked. Minutes later she was given a large wad of cash by her parents to make an order by herself.)

Near the south entrance, a platoon of Chinese soldiers performed marching exercises. "So that's what we're up against" said one well dressed American man to another. "Hello, and who are you? we inquired. "Chiefs of staff for a couple of US Senators, here to talk about trade and energy." (I made up a description of free trade negotiations that I'm a bit proud of: "If you scratch your back, I'll scratch mine.")

We met some Dutch girls in the ticket lineup and saw the Forbidden City together. It was very nice.

Cameron

Lessons in Economics from the Beijing Silk Market (Andrew)

As most readers are aware, after 5 years and as many degree changes I proudly graduated with an economics degree this spring. Unfortunately, it turns out one need only spend a couple of afternoons and several hundred RMB at the Beijing Silk Market to get a good grounding in economics. Hear a just a few of the lessons I learned:

Information asymmetries

When one party has information that the other side needs in a negotiation you have a situation with 'information asymmetry'. At the silk market the savvy buyer needs a fertile imagination to fully appreciate the implications of this fact. Our suits, for example, were almost certainly made in a stuffed animal factory, which we ascertained from the purple and pink fluff in the pockets. I think the factory might be better suited (no pun intended), to stuffed animal making.

Opportunity cost

There are plenty of deals to be had the silk market. Coach bags go 3 for 100RMB (16ish dollars) before you even get inside and Gore-Tex jackets go for 100. Provided that you're interested in something that you can, at very least, convince a complete stranger at a reasonable distance is real, however, you have more of a challenge on your hands. Silk market employees are genuinely willing to battle you all day over the last 10 RMB, in part because they love it, in part because they know the gwylo in their shop is just itching to wrap things up and grab a bite over at 'california beef noodle king USA'. That said, where else can you buy bulk mao statues delivery ready? Christmas gifts for the whole family. Your call.

The 'infant industry' argument

Most commonly one hears about 'infant industries' in the context of international trade. At the silk market, however, the infant is no metaphor. Cameron and I were quite literally handed a small child while we were trying on our suits to distract from the fact that they are probably made from polyester and definitely ill fitting. Cameron's, for example, flies out a little bit at the back. What are you going to do though? Make a child cry? Well played 'Jelly' (our sales lady).

You may be thinking that all these suit examples indicate that we're bitter over our purchases. Not so. We're actually fairly pleased. As suckers go we paid only 600 RMB for each suit, making the guy on the Harvard Rowing team we met 3x the sucker we are. More importantly, the suits can still be put to good use. Cameron plans to use his suits, (note the plural), for working out and going for long runs, and polyester is also the perfect material for a makeshift train pillow. If anyone is interested our suit bags include the store's hotmail, msn and mobile phone contact information. Be sure to drop our names if you get 'Jelly' on the line.

Found in Mistranslation (Cameron)

As expected, Beijing has provided a cornucopia of amusing translations.

For instance: if you're feeling peckish and are in the Weigoncgun area, why not sample the delicious concoctions of "Grandma Skitchen"? But if you're not so adventurous, there's almost always a "California Beef King Noodle USA" nearby. (If you get the Mao Combo, be sure to get it Great Wall-sized. My friend B points out that you can try ordering the Tiananmen Square Meal, but they will deny it's on the menu.)

Worried about knowing how to order? You're in luck; every restaurant we've been to (including the ones far from the city centre and tourist attractions) has had large pictures of each item and an English description.

If you want something exciting and unpredictable, try "the palace explodes the shrimp ball". But if you're looking for something more spartan, go for the "pigeon egg abalone gruel". If you can handle a bit of kick, definitely choose "spiced donkey steak", and if you want to kick it up a notch, challenge yourself with "the fierce appearance point pepper burns the large intestine". Starving? The "deep-fried balls with sauce" are nice and filling (Andrew is a big fan of the slightly less savory "ball soup"). We're not quite sure what to make of the "sauteed rape with egg and fungus", but it's probably best avoided, especially at Grandma Skitchen's.

All street names and bus stops and the like have English phoneticizations. Usually they are great, but some are unpronounceable, as is the case with the name of what I think is a new housing development: "CHUANGJIANQUANGUOWENMINGCHENGQU ZHANZHIZICHENGMEIHAOXINGXIANG"

Shirts with English words are extremely popular. They range from hilarious to profound. My favourite: "If you were your own secret admirer, what would you admire?" Andrew enjoyed: "More Respect, Less Questions". A shirt with "1970's" didn't seem all that strange; it was a pretty cool decade I guess. But an identical shirt, this time with "1930's" was a little more difficult to understand.

Andrew's Lessons from China

Cameron and I have been dealing with some serious culture shock but I think we're starting to get the hang of things. Here are some lessons to prepare future travelers.

lesson number 1: raising your shirt is an effective and socially acceptable means of relief from the heat.

Raising your shirt will not, however, necessarily allow you to blend in with the crowd. So far my shirt raising has been uneventful. Cameron, on the other hand, got swarmed by some school children at the birds nest the other day only moments after his first shirt raise. we'll post some photos when we get the chance. He's a bit of a celebrity where ever we go actually. Yesterday at Tianeman Sqaure (where it should be noted there are plenty of gwylos (white people)), someone asked to have a photo with him. So far I'm blending in pretty well. I attribute this to my deep tan and improving chinese mannerisms.

Technique is important however. shirt raising should really be called shirt folding. You don't tie the shirt. Rather, you carefully fold the shirt inside itself. A solid potbelly is a real asset. Cameron has been building an idea that someone should make a shirt with "some sort of clips". keep this on the dl.

Lesson 2: sunglasses are both useful and fashionable but they need not have lesses.

In fact no lens glasses are all the rage. Guys and girls are wearing them everywhere and there are several ads in the subway featuring the no lens look. Here in Beijing, afterall, the smog gently filters the suns rays for you. Some days the sun is hardly visible. This probably also explains why sunscreen is almost impossible to find, (although we did find it today, provided skin whiting cream is an equivalent product). I have yet to knock out my lenses despite my intuition that I could be ahead of the curve when I reach the UK.

Lesson 3: learn some mandarin before you come

Cameron and I have an ongoing competition to see how can say "thank you" better. So far I think we're both lossing since without fail people laugh whenever we get the chance to say it. I think we've improving though. Initially people would think for a moment and then laugh. Now they just laugh.

The language barrier also stands in the way of some important questions. How much are those stickybuns? When does the metro close? Or, as came up last night why are there a team of old chinese men swimming in that festering pond in the middle of the bar district just past midnight?