On the train to Mongolia

The alarm goes off at 5am and we’re up, showering, packing etc and heading to the train station.  After a hearty breakfast of KFC chinese porridge (it’s actually really good and authentic chinese fare!) we boarded the train from Beijing to Ulanbaatar.

The train had a great feeling about it - looking just like the archetypical passenger train from the movies on the outside with a distinctively modern feeling on the inside.  The train had a total of some 12 or so carriages plus the engine and a dining car, each carriage has 9 compartments (for a maximum of 36 passengers) and compartments for the carriage attendants plus hot water and a toilet at each end.  Each carriage seemed to have 2 carriage attendants who took turns fulfilling the duties of maintaining the cleanliness of the common areas of the carriage.

The Typical 4-Berth Cabin (this one was empty)

Beijing Continued

During our last two days in Beijing we visited the Olympic Centre, the Summer Palace and Jingshan Park (which overlooks the Forbidden City).

Photos to date...

We'll try to incorporate photos in our posts from this point forward.  Below are some of the photos of our activities to date:

Ni hao from Beijing

Beijing presents a fantastic contrast between China’s rich history and its rise to its current economic prosperity.  The city is vast (being the total size of Belgium), with its distinctive landmarks occupying massive areas in prime central real estate.  It is also incredibly vibrant, clean and safe (there are even x-ray machines at every underground stop!).  English is now taught in schools, so although not necessarily easy, the population knew enough English to make it sufficiently simple to get around, order food and otherwise navigate the city.  

We flew into Tianjin (Beijing’s port sister city), which is 30 mins by bullet train to Beijing.  The bullet train in itself was an experience, where we were smoothly accelerated to speeds over over 320 km/hr.  It was easy to navigate from the train to the hostel.

We spent the first 4 nights at Qianmen Hostel - an authentic, quaint and boutique experience which was more similar to staying in a hotel (whilst maintaining affordable prices).  The staff were also very helpful (with good english) providing us with all the necessary information to tour the city.  Thanks to Adam and Kelly for the recommendation as we really enjoyed our stay there. 

Day 1 we visited the Forbidden City and Zhongshang Park, as well as Tian’anmen Square.  The Forbidden City (now known as the Palace Museum) was spectacular to behold.  Constructed hundreds of years ago as the government buildings and the home of the emporer, empress, eunuchs and concubines - historical China did nothing in halves - in total the Forbidden City occupies an area not dissimilar to the Domain in Auckland city - with hundreds of buildings and just under 10,000 rooms.  The Forbidden City is probably the most well known landmark displaying the building and architecture we all think of when we think of historical China.

Greetings from Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is an ultra-modern city which looks set to position Malaysia as a true global economic superpower.  With ultra-fast high speed trains, universities for technopreneurs, a ‘cyber’ city (Cyberjaya), modern high rise buildings with fantastic architectural designs (including the Petronas towers, which for a while were the tallest buildings on earth), widespread use of the English language, a spectacular highway network with multiple lane highways all seemlessly connected, a highly affordable subway / lightrail train network, and massive brand-new shopping malls spread out over 5 levels - we found KL both easy to get around and impressive to behold.

We arrived at Kuala Lumpur’s low-cost carrier terminal and stayed in the tiniest hotel room imaginable (which we knew in advance) - Tune Hotels advertise a 5 star bed at a 1 star price, the point is that the room can just fit the bed, and not much more.  We weren’t planning on spending much time in our room, and the hotel was very close to the airport, so it suited us fine.

The airport is a fair way out of KL central (another reason for staying near the airport was an early morning departure).  We arrived early afternoon and hungry after our flight, headed to nearby Putrajaya / Cyberjaya to visit a mall for some dinner (Ed, a retired mortgage broker who we sat next to on the plane recommended this to us).  The suburb was beautiful, with seemingly no expense spared.  Arriving at the train-station we were caught in a stunning thunderstorm.  It felt like we were right underneath it with the thunder rattling the ground and deafening the ears!  

We had one full day in KL, were we chose to head into the central city and look around.  In the end we headed to the area now occupied by the Petronas towers.  The towers are surrounded by the KLCC park, a large park with water fountains, lakes, playgrounds a mosque (which it felt like the whole city went to at 1pm), and information about the city - offering up many stunning views of the towers whilst also allowing us to participate in the lunchtime activities of the locals.  

We also had a bit of luck, managing to secure tickets to go to the Petronas skybridge  (we’ve heard horror stories about people queuing from 4am to get up the towers).  After being shown into the video room (which we thought would be about the construction of the towers but ended up being a propaganda video about Petronas’ virtues) we proceeded up the tower which gave a great view over the city and especially the park we had previously circumnavigated. 

Blogging Banned in China

Hello all,

Apologies for our silence over the last week - blogspot.com and facebook.com (at least) are banned and we were unable to post.

Just arrived in Ulaanbaatar after a 30 hr train ride (which was just fantastic).  But more about that and some photos to be uploaded later this evening.  According to our guide there isn't much to see here, but we are heading out in about 15 mins to knock off the sites (pretty rapidly I expect!?!)

All the best,

We're on our way!!

Underway at last.  We write this from the smallest hotel room ever, but we knew of this in advance!  We arrived a little over an hour ago into KL (32 degrees temperature isn't quite as appealing as it may sound) from the Gold Coast in Australia where we had a great day relaxing by the beach.

We're here for a couple of nights before heading to Beijing to begin the Trans Mongolian train trip, which will now be a private tour due to the non-participation by anyone else...

We're pretty hungry as the low cost airline we're flying have pretty small meals...off to forage.