Tavan Dokhio, Amiag, Mongolia

The guide and driver took us to Tavan Dokhio Ger Camp in Dornogobi Amiag (Gobi desert in East Gobi province).

At the camp were two Kiwi guys on a short holiday from London heading to Beijing. There were also 20 Japanese who were planting trees to stop the encroaching desert onto the pastureland. They left the next day and we were on our own.

The ger camp was in the middle of a flat area and everywhere you looked it stretched for miles to the horizon-there was lots of sky. Mongolia gets an income from the planes that fly its skies so there are about 30 planes a day leaving vapour trails in the sky.

Our ger had 4 beds and we ate at a larger dining ger. The most common food eaten was mutton. The main meal of the day was at lunch and started with a salad-carrot, egg or cabbage. Next we had hot soup usually with mutton. The main course followed and then dessert was stewed fruit or yoghurt. We drank tea with our meals.

For breakfast we had either home made bread or fried bread followed by beef sausages with potatoes and then yoghurt.

It seems Mongolians do not like to disturb the earth so they traditionally did not grow vegetables and we were never given chicken to eat.

The water for the camp came from a deep well and it was salty. Power lines carried the electricity to the camp from Sainshand city. The wind flapped the washing dry in no time at all.

Our lips and nostrils dried out in the hot dry air and our skin flaked from the salty showers.

At night hedgehogs ran around the camp looking for an open ger door or they buried themselves in the soft sand at the base of the gers. It was not an animal I had expected to find in the Gobi!

Trans Mongolian train China to Mongolia.

As we were on the move so much we decided to organize our Trans Mongolian/Siberian trip from Beijing to St Petersburg through a travel agency called Monkey Business

We caught the train from Beijing main station at 7ish in the morning on the once a week train. 99% of our carriage passengers were westerners including a couple of Kiwis.

We shared our carriage with Beth and Linda from Minnesota and had lots of laughs. They were heading for Finland by train.

We were next door to Deirdre and Derek (nicknamed D & D) that we had met in Qingdao in China and we had more laughs with them too. They were heading for Moscow and back to Ireland and who knows we may catch up with them in Ireland one day.

The weather was terrible as it was smoggy and extremely windy. There were several places where we should have been able to spot the Great Wall again but we could hardly see 500 metres out of the window. The dust clouds also blocked out the views and made taking photos useless. However we were able to chat with the other travellers in our carriage and share our experiences.

At 8.30 pm the dining car and toilets were locked and soon after we arrived at the Erlian (China) border. In the dark we could see the neon signs on some of the city buildings but not much else. The Chinese trains are slightly narrower than the Mongolian and Soviet 5 foot gauge railway systems so we headed into the changing sheds after the customs formalities were done.

It was very interesting watching the process to change the bogies: all the carriages were separated, half of the carriages were shunted onto a track parallel to ours so we could watch the whole operation, we were hoisted up and the bogies removed and the larger ones pulled into place and connected and lowered.

After we were reconnected we headed to the Mongolian border (Zamyn-Uud) and had to wait ages for the Mongolian customs to process the passports. It was about 2am by the time this finished and we were unable to get any sleep over this time!

We settled into sleep but it was pretty uncomfortable as the wind blew dust into the carriage and over everything. We woke at about 4.30am to get off at our first Mongolian stop of Sainshand at 5.21am and were the only ones to get off the train.

Final days in Beijing and goodbye China

Yesterday we visited the Lama Temple. It is a Tibetan temple and it is fully operational as a monastery. We could hear the chanting as we arrived but the monks had left the main temple before we arrived at it. It has an enormous carved sandalwood Buddha with its own Guinness Book of Records sign authenticating the fact.

We headed out to the National Stadium but were unable to find it with the instructions given to us and the wind and dust from the construction area drove us away. There are no signs in English showing directions to the stadium.

We managed to find it today and it was great. No one can enter yet unless they have permits so we had to take photos through the wire fence.

An interesting building near the stadium that looks like a phoenix bird.


We hired cycles from the hostel and headed off on the cycle tour of the Hutongs (traditional suburbs) as set out in our guide book. It was supposed to take 1 1/2 hours but we discovered so many interesting sites that we took 5 hours. It was very easy to get about and drivers were very considerate.

Surprisingly there are not as many cycles and motorbikes in Beijing as there are in other Chinese cities we have visited. We have read that China is the second largest vehicle market in the world and currently only 4% of Chinese have cars, so it will be horrific if there are double that number on the roads.

Three days of national mourning has been declared for the Chengdu region earthquake victims. The streets were full of people watching the outdoor TV screens and news on the quake area. There was to be 2 minutes quiet at 2.28pm and that happened to be as we were passing under an overpass bridge and every car tooted its horn for 2 minutes and it was deafening.

We take the Trans Mongolian train at 6.30 ish in the morning and start our Trans Siberian section of our trip. We have been to the supermarket to buy food and have done all our laundry and are ready to go.

We should see some of the Great Wall from the train as we leave Beijing so we hope the visibility is good to enjoy that.

At 10pm the wheels on the train will be changed and we will cross into Mongolia. At 5.30 so we get off at Sainshand in Mongolia and are taken to a ger camp to stay with a family for a few days. We are looking forward to a change in culture and this section of the trip very much.

We may not have many postings over the next 3 weeks while we are on the train and when we stop we are not sure of what facilities there will be to do our blog.

We have had a fantastic visit to China. The people are very helpful: we asked a shop keeper for help and she closed the shop and took us to where we wanted, people phone places we want on their cellphones, they get taxis for us and take us and pay for the taxi. We have had so many experiences like this even though we don't speak the language.

Chinese can read the news on the street noticeboards.

Getting around from A-Z has been so easy and the food has been interesting. We highly recommend a visit to China and don't be scared of it!

I'm sure China will be ready for the games as they are so capable, and proud people.

Forbidden City, Beijing, China

Just north of Tiananmen Square is The Forbidden City, so called because it was off limits for 500 years. It is also called The Palace Museum, as the sign at the ticket office states.
The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and along with The Great Wall is the most visited place in China.



This place, around one million metres square was home to twenty three Ming and Qing emperors. It contains the largest and best collection of ancient buildings in China. There are magnificent palaces, meeting halls, gardens and open areas all within the city walls and moat.

We went around 9am and the visibility was down to about a kilometre so it was difficult to see where it began and ended.

A big plus was that vendors and hawkers were excluded from the grounds but that didn't stop other ripoff merchants such as people posing as art or cultural guides from pestering us. We have got used to them by now and can get rid of them pretty quickly.

There were thousands there today. This is one of the younger fashion bunnies.

The Great Wall, China

He who has not climbed the Great
Wall is not a true man.
Mao Zedong

There are several places within reach of Beijing to see The Wall. Many places offer tours that take you to jade factories or Chinese medicine shops so we chose to go by public transport to a lesser visited site and avoid the shopping tourist trap. We will also be able to see The Wall again from the train on our first leg towards the Gobi desert.

The day was surprisingly clear so we had some reasonable views and there weren't too many tourists as there were lots of empty bus parks. The temperature was between 27-30C so it was hot.

Many of these popular sites are planned so that you enter through lines of stalls selling souvenirs and all the way they are pushing T-shirts or postcards in your face shouting hello, hello. The stalls here were selling dried fruits as the Mutianyu area surrounding The Wall is covered with fruit and nut trees. They would look gorgeous in autumn.

The 'original' wall was begun over 2000 years ago and separate walls that had been constructed to keep out marauding nomads, were linked together. An estimated 180 million cubic metres of rammed earth was used in the core of the wall and probably the bones of deceased workers.

It is said that sentries were bribed so it didn't work to keep out the nomads but it was a useful elevated highway to move goods about. Wolves' dung was burnt in the beacon towers to send smoke signals of enemy movements.

There were parts of the wall that we saw that are overgrown and crumbling and if it wasn't for the tourists I guess there would be more overgrown sections. The rebuilding of many sections is sponsored by international companies.

In 2003, China's first astronaut Yang Liwei said that he could not see the wall from space and it is not visible from the moon. The myth is to be edited from Chinese textbooks, where it has cast its spell over generations of Chinese.

We took a cable car up to the top and sat in a car that Bill Clinton used when he visited the wall.

Beijing, China

We are presently in Beijing and are not anywhere near the earthquake area. Some people in large buildings here felt the quake but not us. Thanks to those who have been in touch or have rung Kerri to check on us.

The newspapers and huge TV screens in the street run programmes all day updating the earthquake news or rerunning rescue scenes. The hostel we are staying in has set up a box for donations to the victims and the Red Cross mobile blood bank buses have set up in the walking street.

Near the walking street is snack street and we ate turkey kebabs and freshly made spring rolls and the daring could also try these (teeny tiny) scorpion kebabs. We were hungrier!

We are a short walk to Tiananmen Square and were luck enough to visit it on a clear day at the start of the week. Things were pretty quiet in the square but there were loads of police checking bags and security guards and soldiers. Maybe they expect some action from people who are pro-Tibetan independence.

The Great Hall of the People is probably where Helen Clark, the NZ Prime Minister, came to sign the recent Trade Agreement with China. We have met several Chinese people who knew she was in China and they were most impressed that we had a female leader.

Mao's mausoleum was closed and our guide book says the official Party line on him is the 7:3 ratio: Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong.

We expected to see many statues from the Soviet times but other than these near the Monument to the Peoples' Heroes we have hardly seen any in our China travels.


Across from Tiananmen is the Gate of Heavenly Peace which has a large portrait of Mao.

While in Beijing we have to get a Mongolian visa and final instructions from the travel agency who have booked our Trans Mongolian/Siberian train trip which leaves Beijing on May 20th.

Qingdao,Shandong, China

Qingdao is the fourth-largest port in China.


It is so different from other places in China we have been to. It is a coastal city and quite hilly in places. There is a lot of demolishing, construction and renovating going on. The main railway station is closed for remodelling for the Olympic games and we wonder if it will be open on time as there are no buildings above ground level yet!

The Olympic sailing events will be run here and we wonder how the visitors will be able to navigate the city. The maps that are produced in English are useless as most streets on it are written in Chinese script. None of the bus signs are in English either. We know enough about how things work and can get about quite well but newcomers are going to have some problems unless they come up with some better systems soon.

The Olympic Village under construction

We caught a local bus to the regatta village site and it is still closed as the work continues and it is hard to imagine that they will be ready before the games. The blocks of buildings have only their concrete frames constructed and are covered with scrim and scaffolding. There are no walls. We saw truck loads of fully grown trees arrive ready for planting so at least the grounds will look as though they have been there forever.

The city has dozens of parks and they are well laid out and full of people. The kite fliers are amazing and as a kite fan I could have bought them all to try out. Some of the 'fighting kites' have 4 strings and look like they could lift the flier off the ground.

The parks have interesting statues as well. They are great places to people watch.


Kaiser Wilhelm11 avenged himself for the killing of two German missionaries by coercing the Manchu government to cede Qingdao to Germany in 1898 for 99 years. The Tsingtao Brewery opened in 1903, electric lights were installed, missions and a university established, the railway built,a garrisson of 2000 men was deployed and a naval base was established.

In 1914 the Japanese moved into town and they held the city until 1922 when it was ceded back to the Kuomanting. The Japanese returned in 1938, after the start of the Sino-Japanese war and occupied the town until defeated in 1945.

It has been entertaining watching the Chinese at play at the beach. They buy buckets and little nets and catch teeny tiny crabs, shrimps, and fish from the rock pools. Many of the women teeter over the rocks in their high heels and look so out of place. While they are enjoying their beach experience peddlers try to sell them prawn or squid kebabs, shell ornaments, maps or they want to take photographs of them posing on the rocks. There were no massages on offer as there are in other Asian beach resorts we have visited.

Some parts of the city look like they have been created in Europe. The church bells ring to announce the start of the day's service and this just adds to the feeling of being in Europe.

Qingdao is famous for its beer called Tsingtao. The Germans built a brewery and it continues today. We visited the brewery museum and they have this beer bottle statue.


Outside our hostel was this beer bar where you could buy draught beer and take it away in plastic bags. We tried it and it was very nice and much cheaper than what they sold in the hostel bar. Luckily we were able to hang the bag up on the wrought iron fence at the front of the hostel!


Anyone for an Olympic key ring souvenir with live goldfish inside?