Day 22 – Moscow, and life on the outside…

WE’VE ALL READ that prisoners can find it very, very hard to adapt to life on the outside, right?.

They lose a sense of the wider world. Become institutionalised, increasingly inward looking. They rely on their captors for everything, and live a life where even taking a shower is a noteworthy occasion.

Well guess what, folks?

Baaaaaaaasiiiiiiil… as Sybil Fawlty would say… 

Today was the day we stepped off the mighty K3 after riding the iron workhorse all the way from Beijing to Moscow, and we were feeling shaky.

This chunk of green Chinese iron had been our transport, our accommodation, our restaurant and our restroom for six nights and five days.

Before we’d even reached Moscow Mrs S was already suffering a major case of Stockholm Syndrome. A bigger Sinophile you’ll never meet, and she has loved being in our little Chinese bubble since getting on board at Beijing Railway Station and retracing the route she first travelled in 1989.

The landscape has changed from Chinese to Mongolian to Russian, but the sounds and smells have remained constant and comforting.

The five of us enjoyed a final round of ham and eggs at old redcoat’s Soviet café dining carriage where we finally solved the sourdough vs stale bread mystery by discovering a furry patch of green penicillin on the loaf he dropped on our table.

Our straight-faced “frenemy” warms up… 

We said our goodbyes to the Chinese conductors who had become friends over the course of the week, and left the remainder of our Chinese money with them. From cursing us on day one when we owned up to not having a Mongolian visa (and an invalid Russian one), even the most straight-faced of the lot came to say goodbye to us, bringing the children trinkets his wife had made in Beijing for him to sell in Moscow as souvenirs.

Feeling good about life after witnessing this show of generosity I chided Ben for not waving back at a Russian child who had waved from a small suburban station platform we had rolled past.

“Ben, if someone waves at you, why not wave back?” I asked.

“It’s embarrassing,” he said, looking at me as though I had asked him to drop his pants and sing God Save the Queen in Red Square.

 “It’s not embarrassing, it is nice,” I insisted. “And the world would be a much nicer place if everybody waved at each other instead of feeling awkward or embarrassed or just ignoring each other.”

Of course Mrs S loved this line of chat, and for the next hour or so insisted on waving at me whenever possible, recruiting the children to join in too, until I was forced to admit that waving to people – whether you know them or not – is pretty lame.

Give a little wave… isn’t that niiiiiiiiiiice?

You really do have to be careful what you say in my family…

As we got nearer to Moscow, all waving had stopped and the beautiful countryside of the Ural foothills was replaced by urban sprawl and graffiti.

Our Chinese friends were busier than they’d been all trip. They were boxing up food and trinkets, wrapping boxes in tape, lugging sacks from one end of the train to the other and working in perfect harmony as a team – each carriage liaising with another.

We pulled into the platform bang on time and had no time to say another Zàijiàn to our Chinese chums before we were saying Zdravstvuj to Russia.

Our driver was waiting on the platform as the train came to a halt. Spade-faced and broad-shouldered, he greeted us with a half-hearted wave of a laminated Hotel Mercure sheet of paper before striding ahead of Mrs S who struggled along behind with three bags and Kitty in her arms. The boys staggered under the weight of their rucksacks and I brought up the rear, lurching along with four bags of my own.

Moscow mules

We walked past lots of heavy smokers in tracksuits as we tried to keep up with Robo-Kremlin’s steady pace, and eventually reached his black Mercedes in a pot-holed car-park where we loaded our bags into his car and set off through the wide open streets of the Arbat district.

Five hot showers removed almost all the grime of the six-day train trip and we were ready to hit the town. With little time in Moscow there was no time to spare and we bowled outside with a map in hand.

We couldn’t really figure out if we were in a good neighbourhood or not, although the prices indicate we are. We encountered  a lot of people who wouldn’t look out of place on a Far-Right rally, but perhaps that is just the fashion in this part of Europe now.

We found the Metro stop near our hotel – and an ATM inside. Things were looking up. I delegated Mrs S to be the speak-to-strangers-person (as she is so good at waving) and pushed her to the front of the queue to speak to the sturdy baboushka behind the ticket counter.

“WE. WANT. TO. GO. TO. RED. SQUARE,” Mrs S said…

“Now look here, we want some of your ticket things to travel to RED SQUARE, yes?” 

Against all odds, baboushka’s stern features disappear when confronted with Mrs S and Kitty, and she explains in her best English how many tickets we need, which line to catch and where to get off.

I am still staggered by this when, moments later between platforms, a tall chap with an equine nose wearing a white polo-neck jumper leans in to her and helps her select the right platform.

By the time we are on the train and a tourism student engages her and gives her tips for Red Square I am looking for hidden cameras. This isn’t the harsh, unfriendly city I had been warned about. We are having to plead with people not to get up and give us their seats on the underground, and fortunately we only need to travel two stops before we are there.

Mrs S has spotted a number of shady people “checking out tourists” and “casing out bags” so I am reluctantly persuaded to wear our rucksack dork-style, ie back to front. At this stage I easily look like the biggest prat in Red Square (and that includes a couple of guys wearing bright pink fur hats) but I am not going to let it ruin my afternoon and, when I set eyes on St Basil’s cathedral, I am genuinely awe-struck.

I looked way more embarrassing than this

Nothing can prepare you for seeing this wonderful building with your own eyes. A perfect form in perfect scale, I couldn’t take my eyes off this beautiful cathedral which dominates one end of Red Square and, frankly, makes every other building pale in comparison.

Lenin’s mausoleum was not open to the public so we could not visit, breaking our tradition of seeing “dead dudes” according to Ben, following our visit to see Ho Chi Minh’s body in Hanoi a week ago.

Everybody is tired and hungry and there is a fair bit of bickering going on between everyone, led in the main by Kitty, but I am running her very close for second place by this stage.

We’d planned to eat at Café Pushkin as a reward for enduring food rationing on the train (caused by me forking out the bulk of our food money on visas and bribes in Mongolia) and that meant another foray onto the Metro, this time in rush-hour.

I think we are all buying into Jasper’s notion of the “Invincible Shines” now after all we’ve been through so far, and we head fearlessly underground once more, unable to read the Cyrillic station signs but otherwise well-equiped with our line-drawn tourist map.

Pushkin our luck with this one?

Incredibly we (Mrs S) nail it first time and after a little wiggle on the walk we arrive at the café, which is actually as five-star restaurant, and our children are the only ones in the entire building.

We needed have worried, the boys behaved impeccably and Kitty transformed herself  from a cranky little witch into a sparkling Tsarina.

A friendly, elderly German couple in the window seat near our table were goggle-eyed at the Invincible Shines appetite for exotic food as Ben ate quails eggs and noodle soup, Jasper went for the Borscht – with roast goose – and Kitty slurped down salmon caviar with sour cream on blinis.

Jasper ranked Russian food right up there in his top three behind Thai food and Vietnamese food, while Ben also put it at number three behind sushi in top spot and Hana’s lemon-glazed shortbread. “That was sweet, baby” apparently.

Mrs S had a pork brisket dish and I plumped for stroganoff. Russia isn’t cheap these days and this was eye-wateringly expensive but offset against a week of boiled noodles on the train, it was well worth the cost.

As we left the restaurant we got a better idea of the status of the Pushkin Café by the number of chauffeur-driven cars waiting outside. We found a taxi to take us back the long way and, after a few trips down unnecessary streets, our moustachioed friend felt he had driven sufficient metres to warrant a blistering fare. With Kitty already asleep in the back, him driving like a maniac, no seatbelts fitted in his vehicle and everyone desperate for sleep, I paid up – it was his lucky day.

We all collapsed into our first real bed in six nights and already the trans-Siberian train seems a long time ago.

Mrs S and Freddie Mercury’s big brother

The Pushkin palace…

 
Quailsh eggsh Mr Bond?

Apple Pie smile

 

 

Day 21: Racing towards Moscow (Orange juice: good for children… and good for vot-ka!)

A 3am WAKE UP for me as Ben bursts into my cabin and imparts the customary pat on the face.

He’d been woken by Kitty, it turns out, and felt compelled to share the pain.

If I can catch her in time all might not be lost and I pull her into my bunk before she is fully wide awake and she soon settles down again, the train’s rocking soothing her to sleep once we set off again from Ishim Station headed for Tumen.

A master of the star-shaped slumber, her presence leaves little room for anyone or anything else, though, and so reluctantly I creep out once her breathing tells me she is asleep in the dark.

I slide the dividing door open to find Jasper fast asleep with the overhead light shining brightly and directly in his face and the fan roaring at top volume. Ben is still awake and turning his bed upside down in a bid to find fleecy but to no avail.

I lift up the bunk and we find our sheepskin target tucked down near the safety box and so Ben wriggles back down into bed as I turn off the light and let myself into the corridor.

At 0320 the sun is a fiery orange ball on the horizon. It burns through a dense filter of tree branches in what strikes me a typically Russian scene and my mind wanders to tales of Peter and the Wolf.

Any wolves out there…?

The corridor is quiet at this time of the morning and I have it to myself apart from a Chinese mother and daughter who gingerly wander down from the next carriage for the relative privacy and cleanliness of the Carriage 10 WC. There are the five Shines in Carriage 10; and beds for 36 in our Chinese friends’ Carriage 11. That is a lot of nose powdering, so I flash them a welcoming and sympathetic smile.

I click the button on the top of the sliding window and pull it down. Cool dry air rushes in and I have not yet bored of this novelty after so many years of dank warm air in Asia.

All this breathing and smiling only goes so far, though, and if we hadn’t blown several hundred dollars on Mongolian visas and “facilitation fees” at the border, I would have headed off to old red-coat’s 24-hour Soviet watering hole and had a coffee and caught up on some loud Russian soap opera action.

As it stands, though, we are now rationed to one meal a day in the dining carriage until I can get to a cashpoint.

We are rattling along at a fair old pace as the train seems to be racing to get to Europe. Although the Chinese crew remains with the train throughout, in China we had a Chinese train driver, a Mongolian in Mongolia and now we have a Russian speed-freak at the controls.

There are fewer stops than earlier in the journey and we fly past a number of picturesque stations, many painted a bright turquoise colour, and past beautiful skylines including churches with shimmering golden onion domes.

Golden onions… 

Freight trains rumble past us frequently feeding the increasing areas of industry we come across cut into the countryside of farm land and thick pine forests.

Kitty wakes for a second time and seems to have finally kicked the cold that had left her sweaty and cranky for the last few days. That’s the good news. The bad news is she has passed the baton to Mrs S who is aching all over and struggling with a sore throat.

This is our last full day on the K3 and cabin fever is endemic. Kitty is full of beans and wrestling her brothers at every opportunity. Mrs S treats herself to a lukewarm shower in the torture chamber. When she comes out, Kitty tries to tap mummy’s back with her feet, over-reaches and down she comes from the top bunk like a sack of flour.

Incredibly in a tiny space crammed with the contents of nine bags – think of a VW Camper containing the luggage for a touring rugby side – she finds a patch of carpeted floor to break her fall. There’s no harm done but the shock of the fall and the energy of howling her anger leaves her worn out and she takes a nap.

 
Freight 

There is definitely some monkey-business going on in the corridor among the conductors. Suddenly one of their cabins is crammed with Bodum teapots and there is much excitement, and caution about their haul.

Conductors I don’t recognise are suddenly in our carriage along with a muscular Chinese man in a black singlet and black ninja plimsolls. When we walk past their stash they are careful to block our view with their backs. It is not long before all the employees are swaggering about the train with Bodum mugs full of Chinese tea.

The Great Bodum Cover-up aside, the conductors are increasingly friendly as we troop up and down to the restaurant car for a feed with old red-coat.

 
Chinese food smells emanate…

Kitty especially has captivated them. The boys have taught her to say “ni–hao” to the conductors and they stop to speak to her, crouching down to her level to say ‘hello’. Tiger the translator seems especially enamoured and pops in to say hi to her often. The delicious smell of Chinese food continues to waft along the corridors and is increasingly incongruous as we eat deeper into Russia. The conductors are from all over China and their shared feasts reflect this, with Szichuan dishes side-by-side with Hainanese recipes.

As the trip has gone on we have been increasingly left to fend for ourselves, especially once we  left China. It feels as though it is less their job to look after us, now, and more a trip for them. There is something of a festival atmosphere or holiday spirit and the blue-shirted workers are more like fellow travellers. Often they can be seen texting on Samsung smartphones, or lying in their cabins watching movies on their iPads and laptops.

Sometimes old-tech is best

The contrast between their hi-tech gadgetry and the coal fires they cook on and straw brooms with which they brush the carpets is a striking one, and in many respects is an allegory for modern China.

Still, though, Mrs S loves our Chinese train. She loves the smells and the sounds of the language and finds comfort in it when we enter strange towns. 

Our breakfast of muesli bars and orange club biscuits now a distant memory, we decide to head up front for a re-run of the red-coat/sour-face show in our dour, Soviet café.

You’ve guessed it, eggs and ham plus some borscht again, despite 80 percent of our team suffering from upset stomachs and some blaming that on the soup… Jasper in particular is a firm convert to the Russian speciality.

Kitty is on sparkling form since her sleep and pole-dances around the place, swinging around, moving from seat to seat, helping herself to food from Ben’s plate, scolding her brothers and basically confirming that she is back to her old self.

I will not tell you naughty boys again! 

She hits the hay again with Mrs S as the boys and I pay red-coat. Jasper and Ben have a 20 minute lie-down to recharge their batteries (and give me 20 minutes peace) followed by a viewing of the 1973 Tom Sawyer movie.

Besides being the place where Tsar Nicholas II and his family met a brutal end at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Boris Yeltsin’s hometown of Yekaterinburg is also a place where very fat, ruddy men, with lengths of rope as belts, sell tomatoes and melons from a wheelbarrow on the railway station platform.

K3 pulled into a middle platform and the exit was down a subway. We had a 26-minute stop scheduled, so I asked Mrs S to man the doors and headed underground. Down below it was a labyrinth with signs in Cyrillic only. I was followed underground by passengers from a local train which had just pulled in alongside and pretty soon was entering what looked like a bus depot. Still no sign of an ATM, and I began to get twitchy. I doubled back and jogged up the steps to Platform 5 where our Chinese conductors were still standing on the platform manning every door with their backs to the train.

With my remaining 110 roubles I visited a platform booth and ducking down to speak into the hatch said the words ‘orange juice’ loudly then stood up tall and pointed to the carton in the window way above the assistant head.

She reached up out of view – my view was hindered by all the cartons piled high in the windows one on top of the other – and pulled down a carton of grape juice.

“Niet,” I said proudly, then “orange juice,” again.

Once more the young woman reached above and I could only guess what she would produce. After a few seconds a carton of clear apple juice was presented through the hatch to me.

“Niet,” I repeated. “ORANGE JUICE… ORANGE,” I said, as though she were hard of hearing, and helpfully repeating the word she did not understand. Again she reached up and I waited for the lucky dip. This time the orange juice was pushed under my nose through the hatch.

“DA!” I exclaimed in delight, grinning. “Good for children… and good for vot-ka!” I said. The quip got the response it deserved as she took my notes and turned her back on me.

After leaving Yekaterinburg we had only a few kilometres to go before we crossed into Asia. The boundary line is around 1777km to Moscow, and is marked by a fairly modest white obelisk.

Mrs S took a picture of it when she rode the Trans-Siberian in 1989.

Unfortunately the obelisk was to be on the south side of the train – the side our cabins are situated. The north side, or corridor side, provides a great platform for pictures through the open windows, but the cabin windows are sealed shut and grubby after thousands of kilometres of Chinese, Mongolian and Russian dust and grime and rain.

I perched myself in our empty cabin, resting my elbows on the table and tucking the camera close to my body to keep it still.

I set my camera to rapid fire so it would shoot 10 frames in a second and found a patch of window clean enough that the lens would focus on the outside and not on the grime streaks or squashed insects.

Now patience would be a necessity.

I successfully received torn paper gifts from Kitty with my eyes fixed on the trackside, pushing my head against the window at an award angle, straining to see what was coming up.

I counted down the kilometres. 1790, 1789… 1781, 1780, 1779… and there it was in the near distance, about the size of an English post box but white and tapering towards the top.

I half-depressed the shutter button, the autofocus motor whirred, and, and, and yet another dirty great freight train filled my window blocking out everything. By the time its containers of coal or ore or steel or oil or whatever the hell it was lugging across Russia finally gave me my view back the obelisk was long gone and we were in Europe.

 Welcome to Europe…

We pull into Permi at around 1730 – our second last stop of the day – and it coincides with a local train’s stop.

As we come to a halt, the platform is full of Russian life. There are women in hotpants, men in tracksuit bottoms and nothing else, men guzzling cans of beer, drips falling onto their sweaty stomachs and more nylon singlets than at a Diamond League Athletics meet.

A very large woman with bright red hair and a voluminous canary yellow T-shirt walks up and down the platform selling crisps while another older woman with equally red hair, but this time in a bushy hair-do like a microphone, winces into the sun.

Leo Sayer’s mum… 

Mrs S urges me to take pictures of the scene so, like a tourist at the zoo, I do. She then urges me to get off the train and join the throng. All this urging is because while she is clearly fairly appalled by them, I think she is also a little wary of them too, as if fat beer guzzlers with appalling hairstyles are a different species. She seems them as a cross between something out of My Big Fat Gyspsy Wedding and Far Right football hooligans.

I see plenty of parallels between country-town Russia and market town England, though. There’s nothing to fear here, although given I have been hanging out of the window with a lens and shamelessly papping them to their faces, I have some reservations about stepping into this particular cage.

I needn’t have worried, they are a friendly bunch.

One of our number on the train is a 72-year-old who is cycling round the world (apart from when he is on a train, clearly…) and he sets up a tripod, unfurls a flag and has some guards hold it up for a picture with him in front of the train.

This intrigues and amuses the shirtless masses and they pull out cameraphones and stand behind the tripod firing away.

The local train pulls away just minutes before ours and there is some waving between the travellers as we part again to go our separate ways.

Mist rises and settles from the marshland as night falls and there is now just one more night and four more stations between us, a warm shower, large double bed and a Muscovite hotel.

Almost there… 

Images of Day 21:

 

Day 20. Russia, Russia and more of Mother Russia…

WE HAD ENJOYED the best night’s sleep yet and I woke at around 4am to an eerily still carriage. Pulling the blind up I saw we had stopped at Krasnoyarsk Station and quickly pulled on my clothes to investigate .

The conductor let me climb down onto the platform and as I wandered down towards some buildings a Russian worker waved at me. Two-minutes he said, smiling, urging me back to the train waving his arms.

I jogged back and sure enough within two minutes we were on our way.

We were around halfway between Beijing and Moscow now – we would cross that point at breakfast – and the landscape was one of grassy forest and flowers.

Meadowsweet, daises and campion, Mrs S advised, and when I plunged my head out of the carriage window it was like walking into a florists, such was the fragrance filling the air.

Beautiful scene. Smell-o-vision would be useful here

It was like an Alpine scene as we passed wooden villages with painted shutters and pretty flowers in gardens – like a typically European scene but in Asia. Both boys were thrilled by the clean, cool air and the pretty scenery which bodes well for our relocation back to Europe from Asia.

The pastoral scenes were punctuated by heavy industry, endless freight trains and railway yards, all used to transport minerals and coal. The Lonely Planet tells us that in freight terms this is the world’s busiest section of railway.

Men in orange jackets pockmark the track, their big bellies, worn faces and dirty hands a constant as we watch out for the white kilometre markers trackside counting down the distance to Moscow every 100 metres.

By breakfast we were still 3,932km from Moscow, the mid-way point from Beijing.

Red-coat is really warming up, he served our eggs and ham with a flourish, getting some cold water out of a secret locker for us. He even changed some US dollars into roubles for us after the supply of station ATMs had dried up in Mongolia.

A legend of the K3…

He laid down the notes in a fan and explained to me what each of the pictures on them illustrated.

“This, Moscow,” he said sternly of the 100 rouble note.

“This, Krasnoyarsk,” he added of the 10 rouble note. “Krasnoyarsk, just now. Just now,” he added, referring to the city I’d flirted with getting stranded at at around 4am.

He smoothed out the 500 rouble note and said with some pride: “And this… this Archangel.”

Archangel only lasted in my pocket until we stopped at Mariinsk. There was certainly little evidence of the riches this town had enjoyed during a Siberian gold rush in the 19^th century at the small station in 2013.

There was one small hut open on our platform in between lines.

Jasper and I climbed down the steep folding stairs of the train and hopped onto the platform.

An old baboushka was manning the stall crammed full of cartons, boxes, packets and bottles in a higgledy-piggledy fashion.

She showed her gold tooth after we had grinned at her, but you wouldn’t really call it a smile.

 

Baboushka, baboushka please press your button

Jasper spotted some Pepsi in a fridge alongside the small shack, and began to explain in great detail how it was good for people with upset stomachs because it contains all the right sugars and salts etcetera, but he needn’t have put so much effort in – the air was fresh, we had roubles in our pocket and it is not everyday you are strolling through Siberian sunshine with your eldest.

I went to slide the weathered door across the decrepit cabinet but it shifted only a millimetre or two before holding fast.

I tried again, exerting a little more force. Still no joy.

I tried the door on the other side but that too was stuck.

All the while the baboushka was watching me, expressionless.

I looked at her plaintively, and made a gesture of pulling a door aside. Slowly she reached out of her little hatch at the front and pressed a small button in a plastic housing, like a doorbell.

Instantly the door was freed.

 

This stuff is Da Bizness

We took a bottle of Pepsi, a 2-litre bottle of water with a picture of an elk on the front, some Da apple juice and what I thought was a carton of milk which turned out to be drinking yoghurt (the churn should have given me a clue, Mrs S advised later after Kitty had rejected it at the top of her voice…).

Baboushka was waving a calculator at us showing the total price when we spotted some plastic glasses filled with fruit.

There were deep red cherries in one, and small, rounded Siberian strawberries in another – almost a different species to the large, watery fruit we have all come to accept.

If their appearance had sparked a Proustian moment, the instant I tasted them I was transported back to a time when food tasted like food – they were exquisite, sweet and bursting with flavour. It was the second time I had remarked to everyone how great the simple foods were, having raved about the Russian eggs and ham.

 

Going like hotcakes. Yummmmm. Can I fit any more in?

Not all of our party was having such a great time, however. Today was the day Kitty decided enough was enough. She had clearly gotten out of bed the wrong side despite there being only one side to get out of.

Crotchety and vocal, she lay on her back and kicked her brothers. She pushed an off-balance Ben into an iron step-ladder, causing a large egg to grow on the side of his head.

She shouted at Mrs S, complaining and squabbling, and in Red-coat’s dining carriage swung around the seats wandering up and down the carriage refusing to sit for her eggs.

Fortunately, red-coat’s place of work was customarily quiet, and his sour-faced side-kick woman never allowed her eyes to drift from the Russian soap-opera even once.

I’m not listening to Kitty, I’m still thinking about strawberries…

There was still nobody else on our carriage but Tiger the interpreter to hear Kitty’s protests – and he spent large chunks of the journey in Carriage 11 dining like a king.

When we walked past one of the cabins today a feast was laid out complete with soups, wontons, vegetables and flatbreads all cooked in the coal-fired furnaces used to heat the water for our samovars.

Tiger was tucked in there, pinned in by fellow conductors either side and he grinned at us as we trooped past, the delicious smells wafting after us.

On the third or fourth attempt Kitty was persuaded to take a nap in the empty cabin and emerged a different child.

“Yoghurt?” she asked, pointing at the little carton with the moustachioed man holding a churn before sucking half of it straight down. “Is gooooooood,” she smiled, flicking a thumbs-up. She then polished off half a packet of dried mango and was all smiles as the rain streaked our windows.

Delicious. And. Nutritious.

 We pushed on, passing many small stations, some so small they were just stones and rubble surrounded by white lines. No building just a sign and a track leading off into the forest.

At Taiga we pull up to a grand, elegant turquoise station which is almost entirely deserted but for a man speaking into a comb, a man looking moody in sunglasses and a woman weeding the verges.

A smiling Mrs S scans the scene catching the eye of the man speaking into his comb. BINGO, he thinks, and comes to try to make friends, causing her to wind her neck back  away from the window like a startled tortoise. Every village needs its idiot, and I shall call this man Kenneth. 

 

Turquoise Taiga. Colour co-ordinated Kenneth.

More borscht, more blaring soap opera and more sour looks from old sour-face.

We pull into Novosibirsk at around 4pm, and Siberia’s capital provides something of a culture shock after all the greenery.

There is something very Soviet about the place. Freight trains are loaded and unloaded by grim-faced men driving tractors. The approach to the station and the route away from it are lined by beaten-up buildings, Soviet-era housing blocks and factories.

I could eat this till I borscht

Shortly after leaving the city the countryside grabs back Siberia and we find ourselves among greenery again before crossing the Ob on a 870m bridge. The falling sun glints off the wide expanse of water and huge barges and rafts float in the centre.

Only freight trains interrupt our view of the verdant surroundings, but they are frequent.

Shortly after crossing the River Ob a train carrying scores of Russian tanks passes us, their guns pointing potently ahead.

 

 Obviously the Ob

Kitty settles down with The King and I on her iPad and we ease into open marshland as Rodgers and Hammerstein hits drift down from the top bunk. It makes a welcome change from the Peppa Pig theme tune.

Mrs S plunders the bottomless supplies bag once again and produces a feast to rival our Chinese conductors as another day riding the rails draws to a close.

Tomorrow we leave Siberia to enter the Urals and already I feel a little sad to be leaving this beautiful and harsh part of the planet.

The intrepid Shines ride the trans-Siberian

Kitty takes the long walk back from old redcoat’s Soviet café up front to civilisation in Carriage 10…

Day 19 – Into Russia: Boobs, buttocks and the tomato diarrhoea

“CELEBRATION! We made it!” Jasper beamed in the morning. “How much did you have to pay?”

What role models we are turning out to be…

We talked through the events of last night and of how nobody had to be paid because the world is becoming a less corrupt place, but that we had been fined 2,000 roubles each, which we will pay when we get back to the UK.

We then practised palming a folded dollar bill to each other in the guise of a handshake – all the essential life skills are being learnt on this Long Trip Home.

It really is a long, long way…

We had woken up ridiculously early having wound the clock back four hours in the space of 100 metres from the Mongolian border town of Suhe-Bator to Naushki in Russia,  because the train operates on the same time as Moscow, some 5,894 kilometres to the west.

Ben woke up at 3am Moscow time and was bouncing off the carriage with excitement. Kitty followed soon after with Jasper around an hour behind.

Ben and Kitty feasted on dried Frosties we’d bought in Hong Kong, cheese-straws and some cashew nuts – the breakfast of champions – before we all showered at 0530 NT (New Time).

Power shower this ain’t, though I am in no way complaining – those in the second class four-berthers have only wet-wipes to keep themselves the right side of repulsive.

Did I say All Mod Cons? I meant NO Mod Cons…

 Our adjoining two-berth cabins have a wash basin in a shared cabinet, accessed from both cabins and with a showerhead on an extendable hose and a plug hole in the vinyl floor.

The red side of the single tap is a cruel joke; for this showerhead only spits out icy Siberian water. Actually, more of a dribble than a spit.

We set up a production line. The stripping off was done in mine and Ben’s cabin. From there the victim would enter the torture chamber (where Mrs S was stripped to her pants, showerhead in one hand, shampoo in the other) and pass through to the other cabin where I was waiting with a sarong to dry and an iPad as a reward.

The howls from the closet resonated around the entire carriage as Ben entered the “wet-room”… but he emerged clean and shiny and new, smelling sweet and eager to get stuck into some ‘pad action’.

 

Who owns these clean groomed children?

 

Jasper’s initial roars soon died down and he enjoyed his shower, spilling out my side with a big smile on his face.

The loudest squeals of course were reserved for Kitty who wailed and screamed and shouted and squirmed and fought. And Kitty had been spared the cold shower – Mrs S had collected water from the coal-fired boiler at the end of our cabin and was ladling it over the loud one.

By 7:30 we were at breakfast in the Russian dining carriage. Straight from the school of Soviet design, this thing was smelly and scruffy with yellowing paint and paintings which swung from the walls.

It was staffed by a sour-faced woman in her fifties, whose dark roots showed through severely bleached hair. Her counterpart was a man barely able to stay within his very large red waistcoat, thick set with closely cropped grey hair. His complexion suggested he had smoked many, many, many cheap cigarettes.

Both were watching a loud Russian soap opera when we entered. The woman turned to us briefly before resuming her viewing while the man left aside his mug – a pottery concoction featuring two large breasts at the front and juicy buttocks – and brought us a dog-eared menu.

 

All class, is old red-coat…

 

“Vodka? Beer?” He ventured (at 0730 with three children under 8, remember). “Orange juice,” he  added, almost as an afterthought.

We looked down the menu and settled on eggs and ham, coffee and tea. The breakfast vodka would have to wait for another day.

It is fair to say our expectations had been managed by this stage, and so nothing could prepare us for the feast our fat friend served up.

Served up in thick metal tins – like frying pans without handles – two perfectly fried eggs shone up at each of us, complemented by chunks of delicious thick bacon. With a flourish he set down a platter of bread which was either sourdough or stale, but either way it was perfect to mop up the breakfast.

 

Heavenly breakfast

 The bill for breakfast was almost the same as our fine on the border for breaching entry rules, which might explain the paucity of trade in there. That and the eccentric décor and curious service.

All the time we skirted along the vast Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake. Its clear water and mossy rocks seem to act as a magnet to Russian holidaymakers who were out in force, their bellies bulging over their shorts, camping, sitting on stony beaches.

Like the English, the Russian holidaymakers cannot seem to resist the first sight sun and vast acres of white and bright red flesh was on display. Perhaps this is not so surprising given at times of the year Baikal freezes over – this warm weather must be a marvellous respite from the Siberian winter.

 

 

Lake Baikal

 

The flat plains had grown into tall mountains and silver birch trees lined our route. Crossing from Mongolia to Russia we had switched from a diesel engine to an electric train and the tracks seemed to sing at times.

We cut through Alpine landscapes with wooden houses boasting brightly coloured shutters, women in turbans tending vegetable plots, cows grazing on grassland, piles of wood, rolls of hay and forested hills used for skiing in the winter.

Mrs S is very sad at leaving China, a country which enthrals and appals her in almost equal measure. Her sadness is set off by the kindness of our friendly and ever-patient Chinese conductors and translators.

Three days ago we didn’t know each other and yet know we feel close, given that  we have caused them such monumental headaches with border officials in three countries. I suspect they thought they would be getting rid of us at any stage, but now they are stuck with us to Moscow.

Easy, Tiger…

 

They have become friendlier each day which is just as well for now it is only us and the conductors on Carriage 10 – our neighbours departing first at Ulaan Baator and then at Irkutsk. We have the run of the place to ourselves.

As we trundled back to our carriage, a wonderful smell wafted from the conductors’ cabins.

Mrs S investigated and found that at the coal fired water boilers in each carriage, the conductors had fashioned wood and coal fires and were making their own delicious meals each day.

Visibly more relaxed now they were out of China, the conductors turned their cabins into mini kitchens, chopping and slicing and dicing. Laid across one of the bench seats in one cabin were almost 100 perfectly formed wontons waiting to be cooked, the tiny parcels filled with delicious concoctions.

 

The wonton makers…

 

In another 60 or 70 were resting on a rattan mat, ready for cooking later.

Mrs S has told them how wonderful they look  and smell, but I am not sure whether or not the hint was sufficient for them to share.

Vying with the smell of Chinese cooking is the distinctive smell of pine which pours into the corridors. Our route is increasingly lined with pine trees interspersed with birch.

While Mrs S’s love affair with China is rekindled, my own fascination with Russia grows.

I have a respect for these hardy people and their lives. And a grim fascination for the run-down Soviet housing blocks and the harshness of their existence. The contrast between the old Russians in sober if threadbare suits and hats and the young Russians in Juicy Couture jogging pants and designer sunglasses is striking.

No caption necessary

 

I cannot wait to jump off the train at Irkutsk where we power down for 25 minutes. I venture out of the station where seedy taxi drivers, all bull necks and tight leather jackets, motion to me turning an imaginary ignition key.

In this town dubbed the Paris of Serbia by Chekhov everybody seems to carry their possessions around in tatty carrier bags. No ATM machines are immediately visible so I return to Carriage 10, but not before a guard scolds me for taking photographs on the platform.

As we wait to pull away, young policemen mess about, their green peaked hats set at a jaunty angle on the back of their heads as they flick each others ears and share jokes, before one flicks a wink to Mrs S through the train window.

Next stop lunch. (I know this day IS taking a long time. Believe me, I am living it).

Back we troop to red-coat. He nods as we enter – hardly the welcome for long lost friends I had hoped for given I’d tipped him at breakfast, but it would have to do.

And here he is….

 

We order omelettes for the boys, a pork escallop for Mrs S and I plump for the borscht on red-coat’s recommendation.

Now this is a man who knows his borscht. It was sensational. Full of chicken and vegetables, not too thin, not too vinegary, with a big lump of cream floating in the centre. He smiled knowingly as we tucked in.

Mrs S’s escallop was the last to arrive – while we were waiting red-coat favoured us with a second helping of his sourdough/stale bread, beautifully presented in his big fist and dumped on the centre of the table.

He brought her dish out before disappearing for a minute and returning with a large red plastic bottle. With a conspiratorial smile, he leant over our table, across Ben, and fired a squirt of tomato diarrhoea over Mrs S’s plate, seemingly the ultimate accolade, before triumphantly returning to the kitchen.

Look at that ketchup lunge… the man’s an athlete

 

We seem to have quickly become something of a hit with old red-coat, perhaps because we are the only people to eat in his diner. He teaches the children how to say goodbye da–svi–da–nya and sort of smiles, possibly for the first time in 25 years, when Kitty repeats a passable version.

We strolled back to our carriage – since entering Russia we are now near the empty front of the train, while the rear carriages are packed – so the walk is through seven or eight carriages, past snoozers and cooks.

Jasper read to Ben on the top bunk cabin while Kitty was cajoled to sleep. The boys were quiet for an hour or so after the promise of an afternoon movie; and we then watched The Man with the Golden Gun, a request after our time in Thailand.

Mrs S and I watched the landscape go by, the occasional farm breaking up the woodland, and then turn our sights to supper.

Our bottomless supplies bag yields noodles, cashew nuts, apples, cheese straws and salt & vinegar crisps. The children slurp water we’ve cooled from the coal-fired boiler at the end of the carriage and Mrs S makes up some vodka-tonic – this is Russia, after all…

The vodka may be Swedish, but this is a Russian tradition. Like eating gerkhins. Or lard.

The time ticks by as do the pine trees and slowly the sun begins to set. Ben is persuaded to share with Kitty for the first time – affording Mrs S a bed of her own for the first time this trip – and after a few minutes the sound of protests is replaced by the sound of snoring. Jasper reads.

My watch reads only 9pm, but in reality it is 1am and I am rocked into a deep sleep as we cut through thick forest.

 

Day 17 – The trip dangles by a thread

WHEN it finally came – finally – it was the most beautiful sound in the world. 

In a dimly lit ante-room in the desolate Mongolian border town of Dzamynude the midnight thud of stamp on newly minted visa brought a close to the most anxious and stressful 12 hours of our trip so far.

And so thank you, you beautiful, wonderful, compassionate, pragmatic Mongolian government officials.

Women A and B finally put us out of our misery…

This had been a 12-hour period during which the travelling Shines had become convinced the Trans-Siberian leg of our Long Trip Home was to be derailed on day one.

Horror scenarios had plagued our thoughts throughout the day as we hurtled towards our fate and the train ploughed through China. 

And to think, we had been so euphoric after we’d battled the early morning crowds to get into Beijing’s old railway station.

We’d lugged three children and nine bags through the streets having been dropped off round the corner, we’d navigated the unfamiliar signs, we’d found the train — our magical K3 — and we had set up home in our adjoining two-berth cabins.

We’d breakfasted on croissants and pastries and drank coffees and hot chocolate as we’d pulled out of Beijing on the famous old workhorse headed for Moscow.

We had been simply joyous. But that joy was squashed like a lemon under a mallet just a few hours into our journey with the awful realization we had no Mongolia visas and, contrary to the advice repeatedly given to us by our Singaporean visa services company, we most certainly needed one.

Without one we would be kicked off the train before Mongolia.

It was Mrs S who first raised the alarm tentatively while reading a guide.

“No”, said I, “We’re not getting off, that can’t be right, and anyway they told us we only needed visas for Vietnam, China and Russia and we have those. I’m sure we’ll be okay.”

But as she climbed up top for a post-lunch nap, the doubt started eating at me. I googled as best I could with imperfect search phrases and patchy telecoms. Everything I could find suggested we would all need visas, even just to transit, and everything indicated we would not be able to get one on the train or at the border.

By the time Mrs S woke up, I had played out every scenario from us being stranded at a Chinese border outpost, stranded in Mongolia or stuck in no-mans-land with three small children. None of the scenarios was pleasant.

I put another call in to Melissa back in Singapore who had arranged a lot of our trip, but not the visas, and once again she was amazing, calling embassies and consulates from Britain, Mongolia and China. Nobody, though, knew what would happen, although in all likelihood we would not be allowed out of China, I was told. 

And still we hurtled  towards our fate as the train ploughed relentlessly through China, past beautiful wooded hills which flattened out into grasslands and then grew into mountains again.

We informed the train conductor of our plight and he was less-than-pleased. An official interpreter said he would try to help us and advised we tried to get visas at Erlian, the Chinese border town where we  stopped and the trains’s bogies  or wheelbase was changed to fit the Mongolian gauge. 

He did his best, I guess, but returned to cheerily inform that no, Erlian could not issue a visa, but we could always try at Dzamynude.

This would be a point-of-no-return for us – where we to leave Erlian we would not be able to get back into China with our single entry Chinese visas. This would scotch our best Plan B which was to stay in Erlian for the night – we had a room protectively booked at the grandly titled Erlian Pacific International in Xinhua Street – and then fly back to Beijing and on to Moscow two days later (once our Russian visas kicked in on the 20^th) to pick up the train again.

We had only enjoyed a brief evening in Beijing, but in that time managed to cram in an amazing evening driving through Tiananmen Square, passing the Forbidden City at sunset, checking into an über-cool boutique hotel in Sanlitun and educating the boys on the art of eating Peking Duck at the fun Da Dong.

No, the thought of returning to Beijing left us all with a sinking feeling.

Instead, if we got through Erlian, we would be throwing ourselves on the mercy of the Mongolians, entering their country without visas and facing possible deportation – if there was any way to deport from Dzamynude. (the Lonely Planet lists precisely nothing to do in Dzamynude. Nothing. I could find nothing online and there is certainly no airport.)

We were trying to figure out what the appropriate penalty fee we should have to offer to resolve the problem when green-suited Chinese border officials swept onto the train at Erlian. Our passports, along with everyone else’s, were taken away while we waited for the wheels to be changed.

Not until four hours later did the official return having stamped exit on our Chinese visas and waved us on to Mongolia and our fate at the border. At least we would have a fighting chance of bribing a Mongolian official, we reasoned, since we were being given the opportunity of meeting them face to face.

The children slept fitfully in their bunks and I waited in the darkness. My stomach was in knots as the immigration team boarded the train. A burly female passport official stood in the doorway blocking out all the weak yellow light from the hallway.

“Passport” she said, holding out an upturned hand.

I handed over all five, making it clear I had three sleeping children next door 

Our train conducter mumbled something. She glanced at him, and again at me, before flicking through my passport’s pages with the dexterity of a money counter.

“Ah… slight problem there,” I began to stammer, before she spoke over me. “Mongolian visa?”

I shook my head and tried to begin my rehearsed spiel about how it was all a terrible mistake, how we hadn’t deliberately boarded the train like stowaways knowing we were breaking Mongolian law, and that I had US dollars and obviously knew there would have to be a “penalty fee” if she could only help me out of this whole mess.

But before I could even get into my stride she had walked away and turned to Mrs S next door with the same questions: “Passport? Mongolian visa?”

All the while she shook her head gravely, flicking through the passports again and again as if a Mongolian visa might suddenly appear. 

“You come with me,” she said finally, pointing at my chest.

We climbed down the steep iron ladder of the train onto the tracks and towards an austere block as Mrs S peered out the window after me.

I was led through a reception room, down a corridor lit by flickering fluorescent tubes, and into a small room inhabited by two women. They seemed less intimidating than their muscular colleague, were dressed in blue rather than white, and lacked the military-style decorations on their uniforms.

These women too shook their heads gravely, however, and their English was as bad as my Mongolian and so we were left with shrugs and smiles and pleading looks.

On the table, though, was a calculator and a pen and some papers – this looked promising I thought, as I reached into my pocket to separate the US dollars from one fold into two bundles.

Woman ‘A’ gave me a level look through her oval glasses but didn’t appear without sympathy as she looked through the passports. Among her Mongolian I could here ‘Katt-er–eeyn’. She was telling her colleague about Kitty.

The clock ticked and we had less than half an hour before the train was due to head into the Gobi.

“So, please, if there is anything you can do to help me, I would really appreciate it,” I told them both. “Anything. I have U.S. dollars, and know this will be more expensive than usual because it is an emergency.”

Woman ‘B’ sighed and picked up the calculator.

“You will need 10 day transit,” she said, before tapping into the keyboard.

She handed the calculator to me. $280. It was much less than I had been prepared for and barely more than the price of five visas obtained the more conventional way.

“Okay, of course,” I nodded after a brief pause, and she nodded back, handed me five forms and a pen. It was one of those pens with four coloured inks in it and she spent 10 seconds clicking them round before smiling at me and handing it to me.

We were almost there.

I filled in the forms while Woman ‘A’ tapped away on her computer and printed out visas. Woman ‘B’ smiled again when I handed her $300, and showed me the $280 on her screen.

I smiled back. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, waving away the money. I didn’t expect $20 change – or 30,000 Tugriks. The tip was the least I could do for them.

Woman ‘B’ seemed happy and spoke to Woman ‘A’ before collecting up our passports. We walked back through the corridors to another room where a row of white-uniformed officers were stamping passports.

Ours were handed to the stern black-haired woman who had marched me off the train. She looked up at me, back down at my passport, and then brought her stamp down on the visa with a loud thud.

“Go back to train,” Woman ‘B’ told me, and led me out to the front of the building.

I crossed the platform walking on air.

The doors to the train were locked and I banged on the side of the carriage. This brought me to the attention of a combat-uniformed soldier who walked towards me, but the train conductor opened up the door and I clambered in.

I smiled at Mrs S as I walked towards her along the thin corridor, not wanting to celebrate until the passports were in our hands and we were off. Minutes later our stern border patrol officer handed back our passports and the train began to edge off into Mongolia.

I flicked through the passport and all our visas categorised us as Irish in our British passports, but we were by now rattling through the Gobi desert, illuminated only by the stars and my mac screen.

For the last few days, Jasper has been saying that as a team we are invincible. I had my doubts today at times, but you know what? I think he might be right.

 

 

July 10 Danang to Hanoi (or what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger)

SOME DAYS you just have to grin and bear it, right?  

Which explains why, for most of Day 10, I resembled a grinning simpleton powerless to prevent the horrors of Vietnam Railways’ SE4 Danang to Hanoi train looming large for the traveling troupe of Shines.

In fact, so appalled by the prospect of another night with the cockroaches were we, that I, while chest deep in the turquoise waters of Hoi An beach, uttered the unthinkable to Mrs S.

“Why don’t we just stay here for three weeks and then fly home,” I mused. “We must be mad,” I added needlessly for good measure, as the cooling water lapped on the white sands and palm trees swayed in the breeze.

 
Bliss in the South China sea

Jasper and Ben were balancing with various degrees of success on boogie boards in the surf — it would be the easiest of sells to them — and Mrs S smiled a wistful smile and dipped down into the sea. 

Three weeks of massages and lazy bathing on sun-kissed beaches, or a heavily stained, malodorous, cockroach-ridden rackety diesel engine up to Hanoi…

Of course just two hours later I was jammed into the waiting room at Danang Station, sweat dripping into my eyes, a lazy fan barely turning overhead, surrounded by those Vietnamese too poor to fly and by pimply, sweaty backpackers. 

Sweatsville 

Of them, almost universally the girls’ deliberately-so-therefore-unsuccessfullly insouciant faces were shiny with grime; while the boys’ scraggy, patchwork beards failed to adequately cover red spots and boils poking through their adolescent skin.

Their chat was as cliched as their appearance:  The cheapest meal they’d found; the most secluded spot they’d discovered away from tourists (they said this word like it was a swearword, as though they were hill farmers whose crops had been ruined by tramping visitors, as though they were *not* tourists themselves), the most authentic experience they had, uniquely, uncovered and so on. 

All sported slightly threadbare and sweat-stained clothes — peasant chic, I guess. Not a good look, though. And not a good smell.

The beast arrives 

And then there was us. The fragrant Mrs S, an English rose occasionally dabbing her upper lip; Jasper, warm but unruffled, his blond hair in hot demand by locals for a photograph; Ben, freckled and sunburnt but squatting down sitting on his heels as our Filipina helper in Singapore had taught him; Kitty, red-cheeked and drowsy in her mummy’s arms; and me. Hot, sweaty and impatient, like a soggy wicker man towering above the locals, my volume rising with each unanswered query.

It hadn’t looked good. Our train was late; the noise coming from the announcement speaker resembled a Dalek with a sore throat; the women in flowing blue dresses responsible for locking people into the sweltering waiting room until seconds before the trains pulled away would not look me in the eye, nor answer my questions with any degree of conviction. 

But then the noisy, smelly iron beast loomed into view; we detected the word ‘Hanoi’ in the garbled tannoy announcement; a blue-dress nodded and we were on, clambering up and aboard the monster. 

And do you know what, it wasn’t half bad. 

Whether we’d become inured to the horrors having gone through painful aversion therapy on leg one, whether it was boarding on a sunny afternoon in a relatively small station rather than at night in Saigon, whether it was having enjoyed such a pleasant time with locals the day before… whatever it was, this time none of us were fazed. In fact, we were relaxed. 

The Kit-Kat kicks back… nice and relaxed… 

Yes, our neighbours were just as noisy, yes we had to crush just as many unwelcome guests both in the air and underfoot and yes, the same Vietnamese cigarette smoke wafted into our carriage, but none of it mattered this time. 

The boys were more self-sufficient, even Kitty seemed a little hardier, and we were able to laugh at things that had perturbed us just days before.

Ben’s request to fire his Hoi An souvenir Spiderman spinning top (yes, really…) around the less-than-clean floor within seconds of hauling our bags into the carriage was met with what can only be described as an uncharacteristically calm rejection. A stoic and instant nod from son number two at the time suggests this might be a more productive method to employ in future, rather than my erstwhile more robust approach when under stress. 

We laughed along when the guard and her male equivalent from carriage 8  fell into our cabin mid play-fight, we waved and smiled at the hawkers on Hue Station whereas days before we’d avoided eye-contact… this was much, much more fun.

Our new best friends at Hue station (who inexplicably aren’t waving and smiling in this picture) 

And with the renewed sense of fun came a pang of pride and of happiness at what we were attempting and, so far, achieving. This really is a mammoth trip with three small children but if they get even a fraction from it that we are, it will be worth every fetid waiting room and cramped train cabin.

(Speaking of which, a big shout out to the fantastic Melissa Tan of Lightfoot Travel who helped tweak our Trans-Siberian plan today, after we decided to ditch the four-berth cabin from Beijing to Moscow and swap it instead for two “deluxe” — I use that word advisedly — adjoining two-berth cabins. We figure that for six days non-stop, a little more space might be a good thing as might the grandly-titled shared shower that comes with the “deluxe” version. Melissa, back in Singapore, responded to my emails and texts immediately, and sent a colleague down to the railway station in Beijing to swap the tickets. Thanks, Melissa, you’re a star)

The train ride itself from the central coast up to the north was a breathtaking slice through the most beautiful countryside, with hills on one side, azure sea on the other. We balanced on a precipice, gripping the rails as the jungle flew by below and forlorn railways workers stood outside isolated huts holding flags.

Marvel at this picture – it involved balancing in the loo and waving my camera out the window…  

Our bottomless picnic bag once again offered up its wares to the hungry travellers (actually Mrs S had been told to harvest a packed supper from the Victoria’s breakfast buffet when she requested a take away picnic, and she had done a five-star job). Ham baguettes, fruit and pastries were all plundered as we rattled northwards while Kitty had me shell pistachios for the best part of half an hour.

Supper time

And it was goooooood, mummy… 

Even a gymnastically yogic tantrum from the two-year-old before bedtime was not enough to shake my good spirits. Nor were the antics of the seemingly deaf pea-brain in the corridor bellowing at the top of his voice and rattling the door handle as the children tried to sleep and I peered into my laptop screen.

In the morning we’ll be in Hanoi. But today… today was a good day.

Other images from Day 10:

 

Are we there yet?

 
More pistachios, daddy…

Why are they making us leave?

Nice work guys, this *sure* beats bobbing around in a perfect sea…

Yogic tantrum time

 

Before sleeps…

Writing on the hoof… 

 

 

Arrival. Or should that be Survival?

The groaning, creaking, stinking Saigon to Danang train wheezes to a halt… couldn’t get off quickly enough.

July 3/4: Butterworth to Bangkok (or the day I discovered I no longer have any shame; and we swap palm plantations for paddy fields).

I CAN’T remember ever before feeling thankful for Thai insurgents… but then that came much later on Wednesday. First came the realisation that at the ripe old age of 44 I am finally free of any sense of shame or semblance of self-consciousness.

This can be the only possible reason I happily paid a man old enough to be my grandfather to pedal me around Penang’s Georgetown, straining ever sinew in his seventy-something-year-old 60kg body as I smiled beatifically from my trishaw’s throne at passers-by and tooting motorists.

I was only a fraction from proffering a Windsor wave – only the pith helmet was missing. Mrs S at least had the decency to look bashful while the three wee’uns and myself had the time of our lives weaving through the Pearl of the East’s colourful streets.
“Drive on my man, while my companion plays his warbling whistle…”

It was in Georgetown that Mrs S uttered the line of the day as we toured the Cornwallis Fort. “Darling, you know the difference between right and wrong and it is wrong to throw rocks at ancient buildings,” she calmly explained. Ben was the hapless recipient on this occasion. He soon cheered up after buying a warbling whistle form a local souvenir shop, and our tat-count rose by one.

Things took a turn for the worse for the B-man shortly after, though, as, on our ride back to the hotel, I flicked at his arm as he waved said warbling whistle in front of my nose and camera, sending the offending article flying into the road and under the wheels of a car behind. Indignant tears ensued, but at least there were no more toot-toots… and he soon saw the funny side of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeAlmGH6264

Once we had thanked our gasping and panting trishaw drivers, we rejected the E&O’s overtures to use the children’s pool to cool off, preferring instead the majestic sea-front swimming pool while the kitchen prepared packed lunches for our train to Bangkok. The E&O is a beautiful, palm-fringed vision of 19th century grandeur and a much-welcome stop over after our lengthy trundle up from Kuala Lumpur.Destroying the serenity of the E&O pool

 
Kitty getting ready for some swim action…

The schizophrenia of southeast Asian rail employees was on full display again at Butterworth station where an hour of “relax, relax, it’s okay, no problem, relax, come soon” was switched to “THE TRAIN IS LEAVING ON PLATFORM TWO IN TWO MINUTES” in what seemed like a nano-second. Fortunately we had our own warning mechanism — Kitty’s need to have her nappy changed just as a train is about to arrive. That knack has been running like clockwork so far.

The wait at Butterworth station was sufficient to make huge inroads into the E&O picnic (oh how travellers on their ‘Gap Yaaaaaar‘ would have sneered) and to replenish Mrs S’s bottomless snack bag.

The trusty Cold Storage tote has kept us happily in drink and victuals to date and, tardis like, seems to hold a staggering volume of goods. I found a container of cold chips in there tonight (true story).
The amazing bottomless Cold Storage bag 

And so to the insurgents. It seems that due to the unrest in southern Thailand, these days an armed guard patrols the sleeper trains travelling north from Malaysia. This knowledge instantly put me at ease and allowed me to stop worrying about the gangs of marauding bag-slashers and brigands I had imagined stealing our passports/money/kidneys. 

Poverty, though, was very near the surface as the palms gave way to paddies and most likely contributes to the unrest in the region. Our train rattled past ramshackle housing, broken down vehicles and scrubland.

Those trying to earn a crust are caught behind the eight ball on Train 36 as the women jumping on at one stop selling what smelled like delicious chicken had been pipped at the post by the better-organised contractors who had collected orders at the border to be delivered later on the route.
Tucking in – fine food on the Bangkok Ekspres

One thing which cannot be underestimated is the sheer volume of noise on these trains, however. Our fellow travellers could well have been attending a Brian Blessed symposium on voice projection. I know some pretty loud people — namecheck Schofes and JB — but these guys really were something else.

In the booth next door were 3 generations of Bogan royalty who did everything with the volume cranked to 11, from playing cards, to ordering food, to huffing and puffing backs onto shelves.

 Not to be outdone were the bizarre members of some sort of running club sporting Hawaiian shirts, though truth be told they looked as if they could run no farther than to the nearest roti prata shop. They bellowed the drinking songs and were soon joined by a large European man wearing a cub-scout neckerchief who had been fondling a Chinese woman’s feet (I had a strong feeling he didn’t really know her and was merely demonstrating some perceived skill picked up in “the East”). 

Strangest of all, though, was the academic-looking white-bearded German gentleman in the seats behind us who started the journey reading a dog-eared Penguin Classic. Two hours in and he had started drinking with a pair of mainland Chinese teenagers opposite. Three hours in and we ALL knew he had “had a driving accident in Shanghai” that his “favourite beer was a hoppy one from northern Germany” and that “I like chaos, yes, chaos is gooooood“.

I can’t be sure where euphemism started or ended, but by the time I managed to tune out, he was advising his new Chinese friends where they should visit in Bangkok. And I think you can guess the rest.

Juergen moves in for the kill…

To think I had been mildly concerned that Kitty and the rest of the Shine travelling circus would make a kerfuffle — it really was an aural assault from all corners of the carriage.

 “At least we’ll sleep well,” smiled Mrs S laconically as the drone rumbled on.

8 HOURS LATER:

 What can I say? When Mrs S is right, she’s right. We all slept the sleep of the good apart from a brief i-need-a-wee moment from B. The highlight of that 3am stumble down the corridor was the uniform groans from the running-team-revellers at the loud whoosh of the train doors letting us into the next carriage. 

 Our policeman/bed-maker was barely recognisable by the time our slumbering train rocked awake deep in the Thai countryside at around 7:30. Casually dressed in Malaysia, as he neared home HQ he had transformed himself into a character straight out of CHiPs… sporting the tightest of trousers, equally tight top, and a natty black jacket adorned with countless ribbons, badges and embellishments. Only his stern demeanour linked the two characters – so much for the Land of Smiles.
CHiPs. This is serious business, so no smiling…

Fields of lotus leaves flew past, along with level crossings abuzz with mopeds, brightly painted wooden houses and paddy field after paddy field. And still Carriage 10 and its motley characters rolled north. The beer started up again at 9am, the innuendo shortly afterwards. 

In our cabin, coffee and Milo was taken — the latter sipped from a spoon and predictably spilt on dad’s shorts — and Mrs S’s bottomless picnic bag plundered as we thought longingly of fresh Thai street food, and Jasper vowed to try deep-fried locust the first opportunity possible. He may live to regret that. And soon, as we plan a trip to the floating market in Bangkok…  

We pulled into Bangkok station and within half an hour were checked into the Anantara Sathorn, had rinsed the grime of the travel off, and turned our once-pristine suite into a hobo’s hovel. Eager to pack as much into the rest of the day we rode the SkyTrain to get some food, walked the SkyWalk to pick up some shopping and even squeezed in a trip to the gym before supper. The 5 of us hit the road in our glad rags at 8 to grab some food but in hindsight it was a bit ambitious and Ben fell asleep at the table… where five had walked to the restaurant, only three walked back, two with babes in arms.

Tomorrow’s another day…

The Shine wrecking ball rolls through the Anantara Hotel…

MORE MEMORABLE MOMENTS FROM DAYS 3/4:

We’re having a ball…

Nighty-night…

See you in the morning…

Hello Bangkok…

A fantastic, bustling city

Tuktuk time…

 

 

July 1st 2013 – Day One reflections (just don’t expect this every day…)

So we survived day one, and it should all be downhill from here, right? The children were superstars despite being absolutely wired by the time we got into KL…

The JOY of arriving…

Truth be known, the only sense of humour failure was all mine — when it became evident Kuala Lumpur taxis are incapable of transporting anyone if they happen to be toting luggage any larger than an Hermes clutch bag. This, due to the fact their Proton boots/trunks are pretty much entirely taken up with LPG tanks. I know this now, but it took me a while to work out why cabbie after cabbie was turning his nose up at my bag-laden family and moving down the line. Still, look on the bright side, it was nothing ANOTHER lengthy wait in a shambolic queue at KL Sentral didn’t resolve.

Oh, NOTE TO SELF. Kitty really must alternate sitting on the left and right side of the aisles on the trains, at least until we get out of Malaysia. Today she was on the right side for the bulk of the journey – which meant for the best part of eight hours her left cheek and left cheek alone was pulled and pinched and pummelled by dozens of elderly headscarved “aunties”, cooing in Bahasa and tweaking the nonplussed Kitty’s face…

Coogee, coogee, coo… lemme grab that big juicy lambchop!

Ben puffed up with pride, showing his mum round our first hotel (a late addition to the schedule because he REALLY wanted to show Zoe where he stayed on his first big boys’ rugby tour). He was a little crestfallen to learn they did not have the “best burger I have ever eaten” on the menu for his supper, but he held it together waaaaaaay better than I did when I locked our passports and cash in the safe only to be unable to open it again. I know the bloody thing was broken but am equally convinced they think I am a total bonehead who cannot read simple instructions and work an IDIOT-PROOF room safe. Perhaps we’ll agree to split the difference. 

Mrs S and the Shinettes are all conked out now – even stay-up-all-night-if-I-can-Jasper – snoozing in cool, white linen as I type. These sorts of comforts will be a rarity on certain legs of this journey but not just yet.

There’s a morning at the Petronas Towers planned for tomorrow, followed by a spot of lunch and then we’re hitching up the wagons again for the push to Penang and a night in the glorious E&O – a beautifully elegant hotel and one of the real highlights for me. 

Before then, though, there is a good night’s sleep to be had (at long last)…

Some images from Day 1:

The sign our friend’s hand is resting on reads: “10,000 Ringgit fine for, errrrrrr, having the door open”. He can’t be blamed, though, he couldn’t read the sign what with it being obscured by him holding door open and all…

Women-only train coaches. A fantastic concept- I wonder, though, does he come here often…?