about: _______

we are now lagging behind on our maps and trivia, but they will be there soon with the pictures.

Upon arrival to St. Petersburg, we walked over to our hostel. We were greeted by the owner of the hostel, who was quite blind, but very nice. He gave us some advice for our morning in St. Petersburg and we headed out for an early birthday celebration. We found a little beer garden at the foot of the Church of Spilled Blood, which looked a lot like St. Basil’s. We had a relaxing evening next to a little river enjoying the view.

The next morning we slept in a little bit, ate lunch at Carl’s Jr., and went to wait in line at the Hermitage. We waited for a long time. During this time, I doctored up my UW employee ID until it would be accepted as a student ID, so when we reached the ticket buying area, neither Sunil nor I had to buy tickets, we got in for free. (yay!) We wandered around for a few hours, it was fairly hard to navigate and we weren’t always sure whether we were seeing famous art or not, but we definitely saw Michelangelo sculptures, as well as paintings by Van Gogh, Picassio, Monet, and Renoir. Sunil and I missed a sign that forbid photos of the Picasso exhibit, so we got chased down by some Russian lady for violating the rule. We pretended to be confused due to the language barrier and promised to take no (more) pictures. I’m sure she wanted to so something about the pictures we likely took but she didn’t witness us taking, but we scooted out of there as soon as we could.

After we left the hermitage, we wandered around the town seeing the sights and stopping at a few shops before we went to the airport to head to Latvia. The flight was quick and we were soon on a bus to the old town center of Riga. We walked into our hostel, which was spitting distance from the bus stop, and they told us they couldn’t check us in until we had enjoyed our free drinks at the bar. Because it was my birthday, they gave me champagne, so by the time we checked in, we were already pretty happy with Riga.

After we dropped off our luggage, we walked to the other end of old Riga through the middle. It was very quaint and all of the beer gardens and pubs were just starting to have customers. It was past midnight. We went to a classy bar on the top floor of their highest high rise (26 stories!) and while we were admiring the view, a retired Finnish couple joined us. They were probably the friendliest, tanniest, craziest people we have met yet. The woman kept kissing my face and telling us not to leave. After another drink, the bar was closing, so we decided to head back because we had an early flight in the morning. The couple kept trying to get us to head out to the disco, but after much persuading and kissing, we managed to head our own way back to the hotel. Once there, Sunil went right to bed and I proceeded to be violently ill all night.

anyway (this is sunil now), we woke up the next morning and ran around riga and took some pictures before we had to get on a bus to go to the airport. and then we were on our way to turkey.

once we entered the istanbul airport, we proceeded to the visa/passport lines. chris and aj were supposed to arrive an hour and a half hour before us, respectively, so we kept an eye out for them in the passport line. funny enough, we spotted both aj AND chris in the passport line, which is pretty incredible, since chris came from the US, aj from scotland and us from latvia, and we all happened to converge practically at the same time.

from the airport, we found a man who took us to our hostel, which was smack dab in the middle of the old town. after checking in, we went up to their awesome rooftop bar that overlooked the bosphorus and golden horn and had a couple beers and kebaps. we also played a bunch of card games and caught up with one another about things we’ve been doing in our life.

after we had all showered and were ready to go out, we started walking around the old town of istanbul. we also ate a bunch of döners on this walk, because me and aj couldn’t stop eating them. the people of turkey apparently love to tell you random lies and joke around with you a lot, so it was my kind of place. for example, if you order ice cream from them, they play a little keep away game with you. and sometimes they also jokingly tell you the price of something is really high in a straight face, and then laugh at you as you think you owe them a lot. anyway, we continued to wander and walk past the famous istanbul monuments until we decided to sit down and have a drink while we waited for it to be midnight (and my birthday). we ended up finally settling on a bar close to our hostel that was playing some american music and we had a few birthday drinks and then retired for the night (after going to our hostel’s rooftop bars and having them playing happy birthday on the guitar for me).

the next day, we headed to the hagia sofia and blue mosque, the two main attractions of istanbul and wandered around the town for some time. that night, we had planned on going to nando’s for dinner because it’s the restaurant that aj works at in scotland. so after hyping up how amazing nando’s is, we decided it would be the perfect place to have my birthday dinner. it was kinda hard to find our way to it, because it was kinda far out of the center of town, but we used our keen public transportation skills to get our way there.

the dinner was pretty amazing. we had two whole chickens marinated in peri peri spice and four sides of food (along with appetizers), and the people working there thought we were crazy because we woudln’t be able to finish all of our food. but since we were fat americans, it was no problem for us. we left nando’s super satisfied.

for the night, we planned on taking a pub crawl with our hostel, and it started at our hostel’s rooftop bar. we met a couple of aussies to hang out with, and one of them apparently acted exactly like me and shared the same humor as me (and not to mention, the laugh). the first bar we went to was pretty cool, but the second one wasn’t that great, so we went back to the first place and hung out there for a while before finally going home. we officially finished the night by playing some monopoly deal.

the next day, we didn’t have a whole lot planned. we checked out of our hostel and took a boat to asia. we chilled in a little park (and i somehow lost 60 lira) and returned to europe after a couple hours. in the evening, we got on an overnight bus to ephesus.

once we arrived in ephesus, we bought our next bus ticket, and got a cheaper price just by talking to more and more people. we headed to the ruins of ephesus and saw some of the most impressive ancient ruins i’ve ever seen. i would have to say the ruins are probably better than what i’ve seen in rome. on the way back from the ruins, we stopped by the ruins of the temple of artemis, one of the seven wonders of the world. all that remains of the temple is one of the pillars.

we got some lunch and then headed on our next bus to pamukkale. we booked a ticket for a “direct to pamukkale” bus, but little did we know we were going direct there.

first off, they really didn’t have seats for us on the bus. an hour into the bus ride, me and aj were moved to the front of the bus; i was sitting in a jumper seat and aj was sitting in the aisle between the driver and me. when we reached denizli, we were taken off the bus and a few of the bus staff people chat for a while until the sent us in to another bus. that bus drove for 2 minutes to a bus station where we were escorted to yet another bus. and then finally that bus drove around for 20 minutes and dropped us off where someone took us to another bus that finally went directly to our hostel.

once we checked into our hostel, we gave them some of our laundry and ate a pretty awesome dinner full of lamb. we took a little swim in the pool here and are currently now playing cards by the poolside. tomorrow we will be going to the “cotton castle”, the main attraction of pamukkale and then we’ll be going to the turkish coast. hopefully we make it through without so many buses!

The pictures for the Mongolia part of our trip, so you can check those out now!

Finally, our train pulled into the Yekaterinburg station and we deboarded. Waiting for us 2 feet from our train was the travel guide assigned to take us to the border monument. On the way, he explained that there are actually three border monuments, and, as it was a Friday, there would be lots of weddings at them, which there were. The monument closest to the city was installed by the mayor because he was tired of taking guests all the way to the border (which is a mere 33km farther). This border monument is clearly not at the actual border. The second monument we passed was the old monument that the city tore down, which prompted an outcry from the people, so they just plopped it on the side of the road in no particular geographic location. The last monument was the real one on the real border. Sunil frolicked around in Europe and Asia at the same time and we probably ended up in the background of a million wedding pictures.

The next day, we got on a terrible train made of wood for 24 hours. We had the top bunks and a morbidly obese lady had the bunk below, so we were confined to a tiny bed where you can’t even sit up for 24 hours. It was pretty hot and we got pretty crabby. That’s all I am going to say about that.

The next morning we arrived in Vladimir and checked into a nice hotel because they have no hostels. Sunil finally showered and turned the water brown (insert racist joke here). We then took a bus to Suzdal, which is a tiny town famous for its many churches and its honey mead. It was really nice to spend the day walking around a quiet, small town in the middle of nowhere. We had an expensive meal at the kremlin monestary and tried the honey mead. It sadly tastes nothing like the name, it is very dry and acidic. I don’t think I am a fan. I also tried caviar. Also not a huge fan. I was, however, a fan of Suzdal.

We took the bus back to Vladimir and walked around the town during the afternoon. Vladimir was picturesque and we enjoyed wandering around. We then went back to the hotel where I washed some clothing in the bath tub like a peasant laborer. Then we accidently fell asleep at 8pm in the glorious air conditioning. At about 11pm we woke up, realized it was too late to go do anything, and drank some beers to facilitate our going back to sleep.

At 5am we woke up to board a train to Moscow, marking the true end of our trans-siberian journey. We arrived early in the morning and headed underground to use one of the busiest, largest metro systems in the world. It puts any other metro I have seen to shame. The stations are ornate and decorated with gold, stained glass, and mosaics. The trains come once every minute and ten seconds (seriously) and you can get everywhere using them. We dropped our bags at our hostel and headed out to see the city. First, however, we needed nourishment. We hit the nearest McDonald’s where Sunil ate a hamburger made of shrimp. Then we went to Red Square, which was huge and beautiful. At the other end of the square is St. Basil’s cathedral. It is just as lovely as on TV or in photos. We both got in for a pittance due to us having University of Washington ID cards and the ticket taker being English-challenged enough to believe we were students. Every surface on the inside is covered in ornate paintings, carvings, and art.

We then went to the Kremlin, where karma bit me in the ass. Here, they would not accept my fake student ID and I had to pay 1,050 rubles to enter, which is about 5 times any other entrance fee in all of Russia. We went to the armory, which was what made the ticket so expensive. It is a huge museum of the treasures of Russian royalty. Inside is a room full of giant diamonds… which we somehow managed to leave without finding. The rest of the kremlin involves a lot of churches with crazy art inside. We saw a lot of paintings of Jesus.

While walking around Moscow, we saw something called the ‘Red October chocolate Factory’, so we got really excited and decided to go there after the Kremlin. Sadly, ‘chocolate factory’ is Russian for ‘former chocolate factory’, so our oompa-loompa dreams were crushed. We saw some more sights in Moscow, like a fountain park and an advertisement for a metal-museum exhibit called ‘kamasutra spoon’, which contained warnings that it wasn’t for ‘easily offended persons’. I know I will wish I had gone into that exhibit for the rest of my life.

We got back to our hostel just in time to avoid a huge thunderstorm. Once the sun started to set and the weather started to clear up and cool off, we headed back out to red square, St. Basil’s, and the Kremlin area to take some more pictures. On the way out, we passed a man dressed in business attire sitting slumped over on the sidewalk. He had a few drops of blood on his shirt, but we assumed he was drunk or napping. On the way back, hours later, he was still there and hadn’t moved an inch and looked creepily stiff… in retrospect we decided he was probably dead.

The next morning, we went to the fallen sculptures park, which was the place where Russia stashed monuments in danger of being vandalized after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were a lot of Lenin heads and a Stalin with no nose. Then Sunil went to Lenin’s tomb, where he saw the actual dead body of Lenin. Sunil managed to see two dead bodies in under 24 hours in Moscow. Some travel site said I wouldn’t be allowed in Lenin’s tomb in sandals, so I bought some postcards and drank kvas while I waited. Sadly the travel site was wrong, so I missed dead Lenin for nothing.

In the early evening we boarded the fastest train in Russia to go to St. Petersburg. We had a very expensive airplane style meal to celebrate my almost birthday and arrived in St. Petersburg in under 4.5 hours. Tomorrow we will explore the wonders of St. Petersburg and then board a plane for Turkey via Latvia to meet up with some friends for the rest of our journey. (Yes, Chris, I am talking about you).

we have been able to upload all of our pictures and we will link to them in a couple days

six days ago, we were on the shores of lake baikal eating smoked fish and skipping rocks. since then, we have travelled over 10000 km (and not showered once!) and almost made our way to europe.

from lake baikal, we headed to irkutsk and saw a few of the sites there along with chatting with some random actor. he was a little quirky (like most theatre people are), but it provided some entertainment as we chugged down the local drink of kvas, which kinda tastes like a fermented fig drink. the actor also gave us a card that had the schedule of his performances from 2003 (and he told us to go to one… weird man).

in any case, that night we were taking a flight to vladivostok. because of random russian visa bureaucracy and stuff (which there is no reason to really outline it all), we were flying to the beginning of the trans-siberian and then getting on our train there. our flight to vladivostok left at 3:55 AM, and we spent around 6 hours in the airport eating chocolate and sitting on the internet.

we arrived in vladivostok around 10 AM local time and got to the center of town around noon. very shortly after arriving in vladivostok, we noticed the russian national uniform for women. regardless of where they were going, what they were doing, or what the weather was outside, it seemed like the appropriate wear for russian women is the absolute tightest and smallest clothes humanly possible. robin complained about it all the time (and still does), but i have yet to find a reason to complain. we grabbed our train tickets and got some lunch at a hot dog stand. as we were hanging around the stand, some random local asked us “tourists?” and proceeded to ask us if we wanted to grab a drink with him. robin was much more hesitant than me to say yes, since he was a middle-aged man who looked kinda dirty, but i told her, as long as we’re not going down some random alley, we should be safe grabbing a drink at the local cafe.

the man’s name was david, and we chatted about whatever we were able to communicate because his english was limited. he taught us a card game called дурак (pronounced doo-rock, meaning “fool”), which is the national card game of russia. after finishing our drinks, he really wanted to show us around town, so we walked the streets of vladivostok seeing the sites and playing more cards in a random park.

after some time, we finally parted with david and made our way to the beach. we had heard that there is a lot of rusted metal at the beach and you shouldn’t go there unless you’re confident about your tetanus shots. luckily, i just got mine a few months ago. from the beach, we walked along the shore of the pacific, then through the streets of shops until we (really just me) settled on eating a cinnabon. it turns out that cinnabon and baskin robbins are the only two american chains in vladivostok.

once we were done running around vladivostok for a while, we went to the supermarket to get provisions for our five-day train ride. and at 10:20 PM vladivostok time, we were on the rossiya, the 001 train of the russian train fleet, headed west toward moscow.

thankfully, the rossiya is the nicest train that we have been on and the first few days turned out nice for relaxation because we needed some rest. during our second night, a nice russian man named maxim offered us some of his dinner and a beer, and then we played some cards with him (of course, we played the russian national game). after some rounds of cards, he showed us pictures of his work. he happens to be an engineer of some sort, dealing with oil in the far east of russia. he had a few pictures of magadan, an area surrounded by many volcanoes, and specifically one that was oozing lava when he was there.

for the next few days, we didn’t really converse with anyone in our car, it turned out that we were a little unlucky in landing someone in our compartment that would be cool to hang out with. most of the people in our compartment were middle-aged woman or families with a lot of children. we continued to just live our life on the train, grabbing extra provisions at some of the stops. we weren’t lucky enough to snag any more smoked fish, but we did get a bunch of hot dogs in fried bread and piroshkies.

the toilets in our train car went out of order halfway through the trip, and we were forced to go to the other cars to use the bathroom. one night, the bathrooms in the adjoining train cars were also deemed unfit to use. at some point in time, i asked robin whether we were allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilet and she told me “obviously not! there are signs everywhere!” and then decided to hold me responsible to destroying numerous toilets on the train, because i refuse to not flush toilet paper down the toilet.

during our second-to-last day, we met a man named alec, who spoke really no english, but wanted to play cards with us. when robin decided to take a nap, i got to test out a little of my russian skills and talked with him about how his son is in the army and how he works for the government. he was only on the train for a few hours, and once he left, his spot was filled with another middle-aged woman.

it turns out that russians are very generous people. almost every day, we were offered food or drinks to consume. either they were all really nice people, or they felt very bad about the kinds of meals we were eating (like bread and sausage, or instant noodles, or bags of chips). i want to believe that they’re just nice people.

so, at this present moment, we have our last couple hours on this train. we will be getting off at yekaterinburg, a city right on the border of europe and asia. in fact, one of the main reasons we are stopping here is to go to the border monument. once we have arrived in yekaterinburg, we will have completed a train journey of over 7000 km, roughly the distance from the northern tip of alaska to the southern tip of florida. and once we are off this train, we will be able to get a much needed shower.

Click here to view the pictures for this entry!

The last morning in Beijing we decided to take a quick trip to the Forbidden City, which was a few short blocks from our hostel. We waited in a long, long line in the blazing sun and got our eyes poked out by a million tiny Asians holding giant sun umbrellas. Finally, we entered the Forbidden City. It probably would have been cool if we wanted to fight our way through the mosh pits of Asians to see into the buildings, but we aren’t the type of people that enjoy pushing other people down stairs, so all we saw were a lot of buildings that looked the same. I started calling it the Forbidden Shitty because I am funny. The garden at the back was also probably beautiful, but it was so crowded you couldn’t see much. I would not cry if the city had stayed forbidden.

After that, we headed to the old Olympic Park, which was still pretty active, although not with Olympians. Then we got onto our wacky Asian sleeper bus and headed for the border. We reached the border sometime between 2 and 3 am. As we got off the bus, someone took our bags, said ‘50 yuan’ to us, and loaded us into their truck. It is customary for people who own guest houses to pick you up at the border and let you sleep the remainder of the night in one of their rooms, so that was what we were doing. In the morning, we woke up to the sound of masking tape being pulled off a roll. We went outside to see what the commotion was. They were taping up electronics boxes full of god knows what and loading them into the backs of many waiting jeeps. We turned a blind eye because we felt it was something that didn’t concern us, and headed to the border. Waiting for us at the border were the same jeeps. So much for blissful ignorance. You can’t walk across the border, so you have to haggle with a jeep driver to take you across, which we did. We rode in a stripped jeep full of 7 other people and electronics boxes across the border. It was so full they had to throw Sunil’s backpack on the hood of the jeep while they drove around. We made it into Mongolia and spent the day in the train station until our train left that night. We also bought a box of imitation oreos (called Stereos) for 1,350 Mongolian Tugrik, which is almost exactly $1 USD.

The Mongolian train was very nice and in the morning we arrived in Ulaanbaatar. We walked into our hostel and found the following items: a western toilet, toilet paper, a real shower, and internet with facebook. After gleefully rolling around in all of these newfangled things, we headed out to walk around the town. We went to a very worthless but expensive orientation for our trip the next day and then ate at BD’s Mongolian Barbecue, the first American chain restaurant to be opened in Ulaanbaatar. The next morning we got on a bus and headed off into the wilds of the Mongolian Steppe.

We arrived at the first family’s ger and played with their six year old all day. I came to the conclusion that this kid was actually probably smarter than me. He also spoke more English than most ger-dwelling Mongolians. He bit Sunil a lot. That night we rode camels 10km to a rock with scarves tied on it. My camel had collapsed humps, which made it the third worst smelling thing I have encountered in my life. Riding a galloping camel with a wooden saddle for 10km is very, very unpleasant. It actually rubbed the skin off of my butt, which resulted in my walked the 10km back. We ate some Mongolian dairy products and hit the hay.

The next morning we rode horses to the next family’s ger. This was the first time Sunil had sat on a horse. We reached the ger and had some delicious lunch and homemade Mongolian vodka (distilled from butter) and took a ride out to Swan Lake, again on horses. By this time, Sunil discovered that he liked riding horses. We had some great dinner and slept like logs. It stormed that night, so we had to skip our horse ride the next day and head back to Ulaanbaatar. On the way, we stopped at a naadam and ate some naadam meat pies. Our bus was stuck in Mongolian traffic for hours, so we got in pretty late and squeezed in a few hours of sleep before our early bus to Ulan Ude, Russia. On the bus, we met two guys from Finland who became our traveling companions for the next day and a half. We killed some time in Ulan Ude, saw the world’s biggest Lenin head, and ate a million tiny pizzas in a beer tent outside the train station. Kalle, one of the Finnish guys, was celebrating his birthday that day, so we also drank a million beers and then napped in the train station until our 3am train.

We slept on the train and woke up to two dead fish next to our beds. They were looking at me. We got off the train and found our Finnish friends, who had a crazy story for us. Apparently, their train tickets were for a prior train, which the train ticket selling lady didn’t tell them. So when they were trying to find wagon #22 on a train only 11 wagons long, they started to freak out. A Russian guy waved them over, told them he was the train’s captain, and for the low, low price of 3,000 rubles (which was twice the price of their train tickets) they could sleep in his bed and stow away on the train. So they did. We all ate some lunch and laughed about their adventures and parted ways. Sunil and I took a taxi to Lake Baikal. Our driver couldn’t find our hostel, so we had some wacky adventures trying to get the address.

We finally arrived at Olga’s Guesthouse and bathed using some buckets and a pot. We walked around the lake and ate some smoked fish (this time there were 6 fish eyes looking at me), drank some beers, and met some Russians. For some reason, everyone in Russia thinks Sunil is German. I think this is funny because the Russian word for ‘German’ also means ‘idiot’. We headed back to Olga’s for a lavish home cooked meal and went to bed shortly thereafter.

This morning we woke up and ate some more home cooked food (Sunil got yelled at by Olga for not eating all of his oatmeal). We are now about to go eat more smoked fish and take a mini-bus or boat back to Irkutsk. Tonight we will fly to Vladivostok and begin our trans-siberian adventure!

Since we will be on a five-day train, we will not be able to update our blog until July 17. But, the good news is that we have been able to upload A LOT of pictures! So everyone (mainly just you, Chris), don’t go crazy if we don’t update for six days!

In what country did Mongolian Barbecue originate? Name: Answer:

there are still more pictures to come, but we have a few pictures for this blog entry, so click here for them.

after leaving tibet, we departed for xi’an and beijing, the two crown jewels of the chinese empire. xi’an i known for the terra cotta warriors and we were planning on seeing it the next morning because we got in a 9 PM. the hostel we were staying at was really promising, it had a very clean and nice shower, and even had fast wifi in the room (!!!). as we started to upload a lot of pictures, the power randomly went out around 1 AM and didn’t go back on until we checked out. this meant that there were no hot showers and no more internet, therefore putting the constant hold on our pictures.

whatever the case was, we made it to the terra cotta warriors around 10 AM. earlier in our china trip, there were a lot of backpackers at a “backpacker’s hostel” who ranted about how the terra cotta warriors were terrible. since i think most backpackers are pretty stupid and try and outdo each other in how much more independent they can get (and how many more off-the-beaten-track tourist sites they can go to), i figured their opinion was practically worthless. it turns out that after seeing the terra cotta warriros, i can’t even fathom how someone could go there and not like them. the site was like an open excavation pit that you can see the work and progress they have done and continue to be doing, along with the hundreds of warriors they found in tact in the first pit they discovered. it’s very ridiculous how these clay figurines are still standing hundreds of years later. and they are all different looking, which is insane.

robin had a field day at the terra cotta warriors because she is obsessed with archaeology, and also had very high impressions about the site. we both left there with very high feelings and also discussing how people could possibly not like it that much. on the way out, we saw the greatest site ever: a subway. we hadn’t had a sandwich in days and were craving one, and subway was the perfect find. funny enough, subway in china is exactly the same as subway in the US.

in the second part of our day in xi’an, we wandered the city and walked on the city walls. also, robin bought a new camera, which meant that i didn’t have to hear her cry about a camera anymore, which is doubleplusgood for me. at night time, we boarded a train to beijing (and weirdly, the people in our cabin were from the US, so we got to speak english on the train).

our train arrived three hours late, and coupled with our taxi driver dropping us off at the wrong place, we got to our hostel five hours later than planned. it was raining pretty hard, so we decided not to go see the sites that day. we had to get to one of the long distance bus stations to book our overnight bus and the guy gave us a ticket that i have no idea is real. hopefully we actually get on the bus. but we also did book a dinner at one of the best peking duck restaurants. before we went to dinner, we stopped by tiananmen square which i didn’t think that was as large as things make it out to be, and snapped some photos of the world’s most populous country’s national capital. we also found out that this was robin’s first visit to a national capital!

so beijing roast duck (peking duck) was probably the best food i’ve had in a long, long time. the pieces of meat lightly stick to the crispy skin and it all just melts in your mouth when you start to eat it. it was so delicious, and because we liked it so much, we went AGAIN to get more duck the next night. the beginning of our second day, we booked a great wall hike and spend about three hours hiking around on the jinshanling great wall. the sun was beating down on us and it was a little hard scrambling up crumbled pieces of wall, but it was still very fun and gave us a good workout. it also gave robin a good sunburn.

in the evening, we went to the night market and i ate sigma’s relative, which tasted much like schnitzel. robin then bought a few english language books at the foreign language bookstore because she’s anti-social and likes to dig her head in books in public places. we ended the night by eating our second duck and watching brazil lose to the netherlands. also, i fixed robin’s computer so i could use the internet. the power outage had screwed with robin’s computer enough that we weren’t able to access the internet, but it’s not a problem anymore.

so today is our last day in china, and we plan on visiting the forbidden palace and then getting on our overnight bus to the mongolian border. we’ll be in mongolia soon and we really don’t know what’s in store for us. stay tuned!

What are the second and third most populous countries? Name: Answer: