Epilogue (The Philippines)
12 Feb -12 March 2008
The end of the line. The last dot on the map. We’d done Glasgow to Hong Kong overland and our money was spent (a total of £5,000 each, that’s 10 months at a grand a month for two not particularly
Hong Kong
10-12 Feb 2008
Hong Kong was a fantastic place to finish the trip and to come to terms with our imminent re-entry to the UK. We were hosted by the lovely Mark and Laura and were treated to British pub style
Macau
7-10 February 2008
A shopping mall corridor between a McDonalds and a Noodle King lead to a large customs check point marking the crossing between China proper and the self-governed region of Macau. In the taxi on the
Tiger Leaping Gorge
3-4 February 2008
In Lijiang we were staying with the wonderful Mama Naxi. A tiny woman, with a loud voice. She had the disarming habit of talking about herself in the third person eg: [to Jamie] 'YOU SLEEP WITH
Dali and Lijiang
2-3 February 2008
Nasty weather had brought most of central China to a standstill. Worried that we would get stuck in the travel chaos we queued for an advance train ticket out of Yunnan. In the 6 days we had before
Jinghong
27-29 January 2008
If you looked at the weather map of China in late January 2008, you would been faced with the dark blue chill of a country going through its worst winter for 150 years. Look carefully though and you
Yuanyang
24-26 January 2008
The bus was late arriving in Yuanyang. We'd spent an hour and a half waiting by the side of the road whilst the driver ran a delivery service of HP printers in a local village. Us passengers sat
Kunming
22-24 January 2008
We passed through Kunming three times. We liked it, it was a nice place to stop. The weather was nice and sunny, there was a nice park, a nice indian restaurant, nice old people playing games on the
Guilin
19-21 January 2008
Guilin has been on my list of fantasy places to visit since my Aunty Margaret and Uncle David visited the town in the late 80s. I vividly remember the pictures of the lumpy green hills surrounded by
Huangshan
15-18 January 2008
13km of frozen steps, a night at the top, then 15km of frozen steps back down.
The hotels at the summit were full of Chinese tourists but the only other people on the steps were local porters
Suzhou
13 January 2008
Suzhou was simply lovely.
It was here that we spotted a pattern developing: we had both started to prefer the smaller towns, places where you could walk around the city centre, places with a
Shanghai
9-14 January 2008
Shanghai has been described as the whore of the orient, a city of ill-gotten gains, brothels and the haze of smokey of opium dens. And it's still a hedonistic city of temptation. Not so much opium
Haerbin
4-6 January 2008
We spent a couple of days in Haerbin while we waited for the Beijing bureaucrats to process our visa extensions. It was -9 during the day and -20 at night, but the centre of town, with its
Beijing
21 December 2007 - 4 January 2008
Getting to Beijing felt like cause for celebration. We’d been aimed at Eastern China for months and then all of a sudden we were there. It was also Christmas and we were welcomed by Angus, a friend
Chengdu
19-21 December 2007
We liked Chengdu. We ate pasta, got high from the caffeine in cappuccinos and stayed in a Danish owned place with amazing showers and a bar that played good music. It was the most cosmopolitan
Jiuzhaigou
17-19 December 2007
It was back road buses into Sichuan province and down towards Juizhaigou National Park. We ended up stranded in a little town for the night on the way but I can’t remember what it was called so I’ve
Langmusi
14 -17 December 2007
Langmusi is on the border between Gansu and Sichuan. The book said it was a nice place with as many monks as Xiahe, plus yaks. We got on the bus.
Munching down yak burgers we agreed that we
Xiahe
11 - 13 December 2007
Xiahe: home of the Labrang Monastery, one of the six major Tibetan monasteries of the Gelugpa order (‘Yellow Hat’ sect of Tibetan Buddhism). The guide book also has it down as the leading Tibetan
Lanzhou
10 - 11 December 2007
It was a pretty long way from Urumqi and Lanzhou. We’d booked our tickets late so ended up on top bunks a few carriages apart on the 30 hour train journey. We entertained ourselves by meeting up for
Urumqi
6 - 9 December 2007
We arrived, we walked, it snowed, we bought jumpers. We saw our first skyscrapers, we ate our first Chinese street food and then we caught our (second) train.
We could have made trips to mountain
Kashgar
3 - 4 December 2007
We arrived in Kashgar late at night. The car that had brought us from the Kyrgyz border took us straight to our cheap hotel. We dumped our bags and then headed out to get some food. I had $25 in
Sary Tash
2 December 2007
From Bishkek we set off for China. We had a choice of two border crossing points, the Torugart Pass or the Irkeshtam Pass. We chose Irkeshtam, the one that didn’t require expensive paperwork from a
Bishkek
7 August - 30 November 2007
We arrived in Bishkek after a pretty much non stop journey from Glasgow. We had stayed in a few favourite places for a week or two - Samos in Greece and Istanbul and Goreme in Turkey - but apart
Osh
6-7 August 2007
We were kidnapped on the way to Osh. It all started when they gave us a choc-ice in the taxi. Jamie and I had both had a severe dose of ‘Andijan-belly’. We had not eaten solids in days and the
Andijan
4-6 August 2007
The town was shitty, the hotel smelt like shit and we both had the shits.
Mostly we just lay in the nasty hotel room feeling sorry for ourselves and waited for the 6th of August - the date our
Tashkent
31 July - 3 August 2007
I hurt my nose in Tashkent, it wasn’t a fight with an aggressive taxi driver ripping us of for the third time that week, nor was is a babushka body checking me on the metro. It was the “kamikaze”
Samarkand
29-30 July 2007
Tourists. Hundreds of them. We’d only seen a handful in the Caucasus and even fewer in Turkmenistan. Then all of a sudden there were loads in Bukhara and now even more in Samarkand. We even checked
Bukhara
26-29 July 2007
In the book I’m reading at the moment, there is a story about Bukhara: It is about a poor man who took an apple that was bobbing along in one of the city’s fresh water channels. He took the apple,
Merv
24-25 July 2007
How come I have to write about another day in the car? I always get the shit ones. Helen gets to write about Ashgabat - possibly the weirdest city on the planet - and I have to write about another 5
Ashgabat
22-24 July 2007
I woke up as the car we’d been in for seven hours came off the rough desert road, glided round a roundabout and turned onto a brand-new 4 lane highway with green verges and palm trees. We were the
Turkmenbashi
20-21 July 2007
The Merkuri 2 sank two years ago killing nearly all its passengers. We were booked onto its sister ship the Merkuri 1. “Yes, this an older boat but don’t worry, the Merkuri 2 was caught in a storm
Baku
16-19 July 2007
After the mountains it was nice to be back in the safe anonymity of a big city. We didn’t attract too much attention until the day Jamie left the hotel in his shorts. As we walked around town girls
Laza and Xinaliq
12-16 July 2007
We should probably have seen more of the high Caucasus by now. The rainy trip to Kazbegi didn’t really count and for some reason we didn’t go to the famous Svaneti valleys. So when the book said
Yerevan
5-10 July 2007
We weren’t expecting much from Yerevan, but it wasn’t all that bad! It felt very European and has lots of cafes museums and art galleries. The most startling thing in the city was its new centre
Vanadzor
3-5 July 2007
As the train for Armenia passed through the outskirts of Tbilisi, rocks were thrown through the window of the compartment next to ours. The lady that the glass and stones would have hit was
Borjomi
22-1 July 2007
Borjomi, home of the fabled fizzy water so beloved of Lenin and also actually quite a nice place. After Kazbegi was essentially rained off we were keen to get some hill action. The wonderfully well
Kazbegi
19-21 June 2007
Georgia’s beer of choice is named after the town of Kazbegi and every bottle is branded with a picture of the iconic summit of Mount Kazbek. We were hot and bothered by frustrating visa procedures
Tbilisi
15-19 June 2007
Tbilisi felt extremely European after Eastern Turkey. It's has more in common with Belgrade than Batumi so felt a little bit like we'd back-tracked. Having said that it was refreshing to only be
Batumi
12-15 June 2007
Helen is again caught reading the Georgia guide book while we’re still well inside Turkey. Why is it more tempting to read about future destinations rather than present surroundings? “It says here
Kaçgar Mountains
9-11 June 2007
The trip from South Eastern Turkey to the far North East was long. 36 hours of bums on buses. When we get to the mountains we’re so spaced out we mix up the shuttle bus to a campsite and a minibus
Nemrut Daği
7-9 June 2007
Another long night bus. This time dawn breaks over huge fields of wheat and barley ready to harvest. Villagers work the vast area with hand tools. Not sure if the fields are old, or new ones
Göreme
31 May - 6 June 2007
We really really liked Cappadocia. It was a soft, warm, easy place where you could camp for next to nothing and spend the cooler hours of the evening walking through beautiful valleys the likes of
İstanbul
15-30 May 2007
At 6am our bus reached the outskirts of Istanbul. The guy on the next seat (the one who liked looking at Helen) pointed out several yellow and blue flags hanging from tower block windows. With the
Selçuk
11-14 May 2007
There are two reasons to come to Selçuk:
One: it isn’t the hell-hole neon clad port town of Kusandasi
Two: it is the nearest town to the ruins at Ephesus
Our boat chugged across the choppy
Samos
4-11 May 2007
Thessaloniki by night looked pretty cool, but that was probably just because we were pleased to be off the 15 hour train ride through southern Serbia, Macedonia and into Greece. The mountain scenery
Belgrade
28 April - 3 May 2007
We liked Belgrade. Lots. Partly because Boba (Helen’s Serbian teacher from uni) took us to great little hidden bars and eateries and told us stories of life in the city. And partly because the city
Vienna
25-27 April 2007
After a long night on the Orient Express (should’ve booked a couchette) we arrived in Vienna. Not quite the Orient but surprisingly far East. Heinz and Merle Opelz welcomed us with food, a list of
Paris
21-24 April 2007
A few days catching up with Hannes and Katrin in cafes, parks and on rooftops. We waited for Paris to explode with the exciting results of the first round of French elections. Riot police were out
The Start
21 April 2007
The first page of the travels! Hope it works. We’re still figuring things out, both the blog and the travelling. The map isn’t big enough for China yet but give us time...
