First day of Trans-Mongolian Railway

Boarding our train.

A reservoir for making power. We saw several of these heading out of Beijing then coal fired power plants and a few wind farms later on.

In our first class compartment. It had this chair, table, big window, two bunks, shower and sink shared with the next door compartment, a closet with padded hangers, luggage storage area, a fan, several lights and an electrical outlet.

A new city being built.

A part of the Great Wall we passed on our first day. The wall is in several sections, this is not one of the sections they let people walk on.

June 8, 2011
Yesterday we picked up our tickets for our departure out of Asia. If you hear about the booming economy in China, apparently much of that money ends up in Beijing. On our 45 minute walk to get our tickets, we passed the Lamborghini, Mercedes, Bugatti, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Maserati, and Porsche dealerships. All this on our way to the Forbidden City. I guess extravagant spending and conspicuous consumption is not forbidden.
We boarded our train easily at 7:15am in Beijing. We are in the middle of car #9 in compartment IV, berths 7 and 8.It was surprisingly organized and calm finding out way to the waiting room in this huge train station. We thought it would be crowded and bustling with people but it wasn’t. There were people of course, backpacks, rice sacks full of things, people sitting, standing, milling about; waiting for the beginning of their journey. A skinny, long haired Chinese man forced us out of our seats when he lit his cigarette. Although we are used to the smell of second hand smoke now after 10 months in Vietnam, we still don’t like it. We boarded our train with other travelers many of whom seemed to be together on a tour group.
Over the last several months we had changed our minds about which route to take to Moscow. At one point it looked like we were going to take a ferry from Japan to Vladivostok, Russia, but a 9.0 earthquake changed that plan. We were going to be in a 4 person sleeping berth and travel the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Vladivostok on the Pacific coast to Moscow. Due to extreme difficulty in getting visas for Russia while in Vietnam (7 trips to the Russian Embassy) we settled on the original plan. Take the Trans-Mongolian Railway northwest out of Beijing, cross the Gobi Desert and Mongolia itself into Russia where we connect with the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow. A 5 ½ day train trip-in a two berth first class sleeping cabin. This is a trip I have wanted to do since reading The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. I am writing this while sitting in a chair at our table next to the window of our cabin. The window in the hallway across our open door is open. The temperature is perfect and our orange diesel engine is pulling us along at about 35-45 mph.
We have passed beautiful jagged mountains only a few hours outside Beijing, houses made of brick and mud with tile roofs, dams, lakes, trains full of coal, coal burning power plants, new cities being built, several tunnels, small villages, sheep herders, sheep, reforestation projects, eroded gullies, dump trucks moving fill, several wind farms and now at 5:50 pm vast open expanses of grazing land that looks a bit like eastern Wyoming. The schedule for the entire trip is posted just outside our door in the hallway so we know when and where we stop and for how long. We have a 3 hour stop at the Mongolian border to go through immigration and when the train gets its bogies (wheels) changed to fit the different gauge track. I’ll have to write about this process after I see it happen.

Second day of Trans-Mongolian Railway

June 9, 2011 5:15 pm Mongolia
Last night was pretty brutal, we were so tired after getting up at 5:30 am and couldn’t go to sleep until 1:40 am after a three hour “stop” to go through immigration and leave China and enter Mongolia. The immigration officers boarded our train car, asked for our papers and passports and then took them away for the next two hours. We got to walk outside a bit as our train was divided into two sections and our orange engine was taken away somewhere. While China was dealing with everyone’s passport we got back on the train and were pushed into a hanger-like building for trains. Each car was separated from their bogies and then jacked up about 3 feet and the bogies were all pulled away and replaced with others. It seemed like the track was the same though, so we don’t totally understand. But it seems to us that neither China nor Russia will conform to the other’s type of track, so this process will continue for years to come. We then reconnected with the rest of our train totaling 15 cars, swapped out the China café car for a different one. Mongolian? We got our passports back and then rolled away at 11:59 pm towards the Mongolian immigration procedure. We could hardly keep our eyes open, but were on our way again at 1:40 am to enter the dusty Gobi Desert pulled now by a green diesel.
We woke up this morning at 7:00 made coffee and oatmeal using hot water that is available to us from a coal fired, yes coal, hot water heater at the end of each car. We had noodles for lunch that we brought with us. I read for a while, Lisa napped, mostly we spent the day standing in the hall with our arms resting on the top of the open window looking outside as the scene changed. Throughout the day we went from desert to dry scrub land with plants no taller than a quarter inch. Rolling hills with no people in sight, the absolute openness broken only by the occasional solitary white yurt. The land changed, we passed a few small groupings of houses, goats, cattle, horses, sheep grazing in the foreground and background. Brick buildings, red, green, silver, orange, blue metal roofs. Fences made of wood. Piles of cow dung meticulously kept near the house, for fuel? The sky big and blue, power lines following the train tracks. The least densely populated country on earth proving this statistic correct. After lunch, we entered a verdant valley with a river running through it. Our train meandered left and right and left. It was beautiful! Really stunning scenery, sparkling river, grazing animals, GREEN grass, yellow, purple, pink, white wild flowers, scattered trees along the river bank and in the hills in the distance. Kids playing in the river, a distant yurt or house with a red roof, no neighbors. Nothing could be more opposite than Hanoi. Open, quiet, green below, blue above, tranquil and still. It was like therapy just looking at it. We made five stops today including Ulan Bator, the capital city. The city is booming in recent years due to mining in the area. Precious metals and rare earths—some of the components in computers, phones and electric car batteries—as well as coal.
Tonight we leave Mongolia and enter the mother of the Cold War tensions with the United States. We have heard the border crossing can take up to 5 hours. We’ll see how it goes.

Beijing, China

The Forbidden City.

We were only in Beijing for 3 days. We picked up our train tickets and then boarded our train bound for Moscow on June 8th.

A functional sculpture near our hotel in Seoul called "Sharing a Biscuit"

Beginning of the Cheongaycheon stream in Seoul at night.

Lisa standing on the North Korean side of the JSA UN building that stradles the border. The door in the back leads to North Korea. The South Korean soldier is there to prevent us from going out through that door.

This was a musical laser light show being projected on mist that was shot up over the stream. Really cool.

Leaving Vietnam

Our students finished up their final papers and final presentations on May 18th. We then went on our last trip with the students and yesterday they all flew back to the U.S. For some reason we have not had electricity in our apartment for the last 5 days, since we got back from the trip. We were not home when they come to collect $ for the electric bill, so they shut it off. We did manage to pay them, but for some reason, we still don't have electricity. So our last days have been spent in another teacher's apartment getting our stuff organized.

We'll have one last dinner with the remaining one teacher, the director and the secretary that really takes care of everything. Then off to the airport at 8:30pm. Our flight leaves Hanoi at 11:35pm bound for Seoul.

It has been an incredible year and experience living in Vietnam and traveling all over the place. We have a solid understanding of the country and it's culture although our grasp of the language is still simple phrases and all the numbers. But it was enough to get us by. Hanoi is a challenging place to live due to the air pollution and noise pollution but enlightening nonetheless. No regrets.

We will stay in Korea for 4 nights as this will give Lisa the opportunity to see the places I saw in 2007, this includes a tour of the DMZ, a peak across the border at North Korea and of course a visit to a jimjilbong!! I know all my former students are envious of this last thing:)

Following Korea, we'll fly to Beijing for 3 days before boarding our train on June 8. Stay tuned...

update

Lisa and I are on our final trip with the students. We are in the mountains on the border with Laos. As I write this, all I can see is green forested hills and misty clouds. It has been raining a little. We are visiting a permaculture school that teaches sustainable farming practices to indigenous minority groups that live in Vietnam or Laos. Worm farms, biogas systems, composting, strip cropping, grey water use, and soil erosion prevention farming techniques and the like. Strangely, the food here has been extremely repetitive. Rice and eggs every single meal for 5 days. Although yesterday they slaughtered a pig and we were excited for something different. We had rice, thin slices of pig fat, boiled liver, heart and stomach and bloody looking sausage. Not really the most appetizing thing to eat or look at.

Oh well, we have had the opportunity to swim in the river, jump off rocks into the river and go for a hike. Lisa had a very full leech on her ankle that fell off two nights ago when she took off her sandals. I gave it a little salt bath and it vomitted up her blood and then died.

Langkawi Island, Malaysia

We were able to purchase a very cheap airline ticket from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia back in October and our date finally arrived. We chose the weekend after the AP tests were all completed and then we took off. Instead of staying in KL for three days, we managed to find our way to Langkawi Island on the west coast of the Malay peninsula off the coast of the border of Malaysia and Thailand in the Andaman Sea. Our hotel was very nice and pretty inexpensive. The temperature was near 100 degrees during the middle of the day. There were lots of Muslims on vacation here including about 60% of the women wearing full black burkas. There was a sign near the pool that explained what was appropriate to wear in the pool if you were a Muslim woman. We didn't know there was such a thing as a "burkini" until this trip!

View from our hotel window.

Lisa on the beach.

We took a day trip to a national marine park to go snorkeling. An hour boat ride away to a small island with a coral reef. Our boat in in the background in this picture. It was fantastic! We saw all kinds of fish including an elusive but large (3 feet long) porcupine fish and a tiny yellow spotted box fish...and several black tipped reef sharks, the biggest about 4 feet long.

One of the sharks that came very close to the shore, I took the picture from the pier.

Our snorkeling site.