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 18 – Mongolia and the Russian border incident…

“Here is your name; and here is our law you have broken”

“YESSSSSS. We did it!” – Jasper punched the air and jumped down from his bunk, his big sleepy yellow hair standing on end and an enormous smile on his face.

“Tell me what happened, mummy.”

Our joy was irrepressible as we talked him through the events of the night before at the Mongolian border and he smiled and high-fived us at every twist.

July 18 started well. It started as a day of endless skies, grassy plains, yurts, cowboys and the freshest air imaginable pouring into our window, as we traversed the Gobi and the Mongolian Steppe.

We celebrated solving our Mongolian visa crisis with a hearty breakfast of eggs in the ornately carved Mongolian dining carriage. Eggs, tea, toast as we rocked through the Steppe.

 

 
Mongolian joy!

We sucked in the fresh air, and Jasper and I both mused how we could live in a place like this. Mrs S was less convinced a diet of “yak fat and dried horse meat” was her thing. But all in we were euphoric.

Prematurely so, it soon transpired.

I had been flicking through our passports with a smile on my face to admire the shiny new Mongolian visas, and I glanced at the adjacent Russian one in Kitty’s passport.

I quickly rifled through the others to ensure they said the same thing.

“What time do we get to the border?” I asked Mrs S.

“We get to Naushki at around 11pm,” she said. “But we lose four hours so it is only about seven.”

“Right,” I replied. “But it is still the 18^th? Or at best on Mongolian time, the 19^th. It’s not the 20^th is it?” 

And with those few words, that familiar feeling settled in my gut as it dawned on us that just 24 hours after arriving on the Mongolian border with no visa at all, we would shortly be landing at the Russian border with a visa which was not yet valid.

Hurtling towards another border challenge

Of course I know we should have double-checked all these things ourselves, but we had made the mistake of thinking that by outsourcing the visa issues to a professional travel visa company, we would be able to focus on other more pressing tasks.

We had been rather taken up with the mammoth task of organising our withdrawal from Singapore and the simultaneous renovation of our new house in England to pay as much attention as we clearly should have done.

And so now we were facing a re-run of the Mongolian border incident, this time on Russian soil. 

I tried to nap but couldn’t, tried to eat but could only pick at food, and I thought once again of being stranded at a desolate border town.

Outside, meanwhile, unfurled a tapestry of galloping horses, cows, camels and yurts. 

As we approached small villages, we passed permanent houses with brightly coloured roofs and yurts in the gardens. It looked as though the circus had come to town. Locals with wide, sunburnt faces watched the train go past and waved from their homes.

 There were windmills on the plains, their enormous arms turning gently in the breeze and from time to time a small cluster of industry would appear like a tumour of funnels on the landscape.  Old Soviet trucks rumbled along deserted roads.

Cowboys herded cattle – some on horseback and others riding scrambling motorcycles up the bumpy terrain.

The landscape took on an alpine feel as we headed west, with flowers and trees and rabbits inhabiting the railway sidings.

As we neared Ulaan Baator the clusters of brightly coloured houses thickened, and we passed homes made out of converted buses, railway carriages and metal containers. A fun-fair had been set up near the central station along with modern-looking hypermarkets and an office block.

 

 

More petrol stations spring up, in patches of two and three as we near the Russian border, and locals at the railway stations seem more affluent, and carry smart phones. The guard at Darhan wore leggings, high boots a puffer jacket and heavy make-up. She held an iPhone in one hand and her flag in the other.

We reached the Mongolian border at Suhe-Bator as the shadows were cast long, and soon after having our papers collected a large immigration officer in a bright white suite came to tell us we would likely face problems at the Russian border.

“They might say go back,” he smiled. “Your visa is not good yet. You would stay the night in Naushki. Then get the train back to Mongolia.

“Your Mongolian visa is good,” he grinned. “No problem, you would be welcome.

“Then perhaps you go to Russia the next day when your visa is good.

“I work tomorrow – maybe see you,” he added cheerily.

Of course this would throw out all our plans and would mean a total reworking of our route plus a flight on a Topolov or something equally scary to get to Moscow in time to pick up our train to St Petersburg.

We would have to risk the wrath of border patrol once again.

As we crawled out of Mongolia, a policeman, a female soldier and three passport officials stopped their joking around to stand to attention and salute the train pulling off, breaking off from their solemn task to give Mrs S a quick wave.

We rolled past barbed wire fences and heavily foliaged no-mans-land, and it dawned on me that the Russian border guards might be a very different proposition to the Mongolians.

This was confirmed within seconds of the spiky-haired dyed-blonde officer climbing aboard. “Look at me, look my eyes,” she barked as I slowly got to my feet. She compared my weary face with the more youthful one peering out of my passport.

I handed her Ben’s passport as he was sleeping above.

“Look at me. He look at me,” she insisted, so I lifted his head up and pointed him towards her as his eyes swam in his head.

She then moved next door, softening only when she saw Kitty and when she questioned Jasper’s woolly-haired appearance compared to the neat haircut in his passport pic.

 She began to march off, and I stopped her. “We have a problem,” I began.

She turned on her heels and looked at me sharply. “A problem?”

“Yes,” I explained, and went through the whole story about how the visas did not match our travel itinerary.

She instantly raised this with a young blond superior wearing a broad green Russian peaked hat.

He rolled his eyes, clearly relishing this pantomime as much as we were.

“Your visa, your woman visa – no good,” the man said to me.

I told him that all five were the same.

A dark-haired woman was giving the Chinese man in the cabin next to us a hard time. “How long have you lived in Germany,” she was saying – almost shouting. “Twenty-two years? Show me Germany stamp in your passport. No, that is China – show me Germany.”

The young blond man called out to her, and she left our poor neighbour to turn her attention on me.

“Why did you come to Russia early?” she asked, fixing me with her blue eyes.

I told her how our train ticket – how our entire itinerary – did not match up with the visas a company had obtained for us, and that we were all very, very sorry and needed her help to resolve this.

I explained how we would never have got on the train had we realised, not with three small children, but that with so much traveling we were only looking a day ahead or so and that by the time we realised our error we were well and truly on our way.

I explained how we were booked into a Moscow hotel on the 21^st (and we would be required to register there on that date as part of our visa requirements) and how we were booked onto a Moscow-St Petersburg train in 22^nd.  All the while I held our travel itinerary open and pointed out the relevant sections while she looked down at it and listened.

Each explanation she duly recounted to her colleague – her boss, it turned out – in Russian, clarifying at one point that the visa error had not been ours, but a combination of the Russian Embassy in Singapore and the visa company we had used.

I could feel momentum shifting. I was winning her over.

Meanwhile customs officers rummaged through the carriage. A tall skin-headed man in a military boiler-suit flashed a torch into every crevice of my cabin.

We went next door and as I motioned to lift Kitty out of her bed so he could search under it as he had done mine, he stopped me, and held up his finger and thumb signalling just a little bit.

His friendly face smiled – he didn’t want me to wake her. I lifted the bed a chink and he flashed his torch briefly into the tiny gap. The war with customs had clearly been won.

The immigration officials left our carriage and we waited. It was silent apart from the occasional uniformed official marching purposefully past our door.

Eventually the dark-haired woman who spoke good English returned. “You and your wife must come with me. You must sign some protocol because you have broken the law,” she told me.

“The children can stay here, but you two come.”

Mrs S said: “My daughter is unwell, she keeps waking and will be upset if she wakes and I am not here.”

“She is unwell?” the woman said, and at that moment Kitty played her role to perfection, delivering a juicy cough and a small complaint.

“Okay. First you, and then you,” she said, pointing first at me and then Mrs S.

I followed her off the train into the border offices, a cold building with the Russian Federation flag flying outside. “First you wait, sit there,” she said with a smile, motioning to a bench occupied by five soldiers in black uniforms.

 

One with an Asian face – the only non-Caucasian of the five – shifted across to let me sit down.

 

After a minute or two, our woman emerged from a wooden door and beckoned me over.

 

I followed her into a long thin room. Just inside the doorway was a large scanner connected to a computer and camera, and at the far end was a PC and printer.

 

She motioned for me to sit with her at the far end. She called up a template on the computer and we went through a series of questions. Most of the information she had already inputted, gleaned from my passport, but the rest she asked. Where did I live, what was my job, and so on.

 

I told her I was a sports writer, avoiding the journalism word which tends to put government officials on edge, and said that I would be visiting Russia regularly for the next few years for the Winter Olympics and the World Cup. This seemed to amuse her and she shared it with her male colleague in the room.

 

He called me over and stood me in front of the scanner where he took prints of both my hands – my palms, thumbs and all my fingers. He also took photographs of my face from three angles. He had started to warm up too, and we joked a little as we did the scans.

 

Then I returned to the woman. She had printed out some papers and was holding a pen.

 

“This is your name. This is name of woman who check your passport. This is name of man who check your cabin,” she explained, translating the Cyrillic text.

“This is the law you have broken. This is where you say it is fault of Russian Embassy in Singapore. And this is your fine of 2,000 roubles. You sign here please.”

 

I felt a little uneasy signing these papers I could not read, but did so at her urging.

 

The blond boss called over to me. “Your woman, where she, she, where she born?” he asked. “London” I told him, and he tapped into a keyboard.

 

“OK, you go. Go to train,” he told me. “Your wife come.”

 

I left the building and strode back to the train (I was becoming fairly adroit at midnight train manoeuvres) and sent Zoe to the HQ. “It is our UK address, remember?” I called after her.

 

<Russian border pix>

 

She went through the same procedure and returned. A short while later the blond officer returned with our passports.

 

Spasiba I told him, and he muttered that it had been nothing under his breath, almost managing a smile.

 

We flicked through the passports to find them all correctly stamped and were soon on our way.

 

Siberia lay ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

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 16 Guangzhou to Beijing (more scrapes in the Middle Kingdom)

Guangzhou skyline

HAU-MASH? Hau-mash? The taxi driver watched my face keenly. His leering smile was at violent odds to the look in his wide-set eyes.

“Put the meter on,” I replied from the front of the VW Passat, two of our nine bags balanced on my lap.

“Hau-mash?” he insisted, gesturing at the bags, at the Shines in the back of the car, all the time fixing me with those stony eyes and that leer.

“Meter. Meee-tuuuur?” I countered, pointing at the little roll of paper affixed to his dashboard.

Mrs S had had enough of this. “Just turn the meter on,” she said with a tone of finality.

Leering-Boy, or Guangzhou Taxi Driver Service Qualification Certificate No. 202584, reluctantly flicked his For Hire sign down which activated his meter, threw us a disgusted look and set off towards Guangzhou Railway Station South.

No.202584 come in please, your time is up…

The rain lashed down and he drove like a lunatic, inventing lanes that didn’t exist and leaning on his horn seemingly at random. He can’t have seen anything coming from his right the entire drive because he refused to even glance in my direction as his radio blared.

We joined then left a series of six-lane highways and eventually approached a vast complex with a wavy, curved roof — Guangzhou Railway Station South.

Guangzhou Taxi Driver Service Qualification Certificate No. 202584 simply stopped his car and waited, looking at his ceiling, drumming his fingers on his wheel as we struggled to haul the bags out of his boot in the rain.

“How much?” I said, amused by the irony of the question. “HAU MASH???” This time it was his turn to refuse to cooperate.

A Mexican standoff with a Cantonese cabby.

In the end I reached into his cab, ripped the receipt from his clackety little roll of paper. 69 RMB it read. The easy thing would have been to hand him 100, given that we were in a hurry, but instead I rifled though my pockets for small note and change so I could find exactly 70 yuan which I dropped on the passenger seat.

why do I always get the cranks?

He looked disgusted again, this time with some justification.

I’d noticed a similar look of disgust cross the face of a young woman begging late last night, once she’d realized we weren’t going to be intimidated into handing over money.

Having travelled through Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to get here, we’ve witnessed some real poverty and so it was a little disarming that the first begger to have targeted us on this trip was this well-dressed, healthy looking girl of around 20-year-old, carrying a clean, expensive-looking rucksack.

“Hungry, hungry,” her well-nourished face told us. “I have no money,” she went on gesturing to her mouth with her fingers. “Hungry, hungry.” We walked on, waving her away, but she persisted, walking in our footsteps, close to the children, pointing at us and telling us how she had no money. She did not relent until we stopped again, turned to her and told her clearly to go away.

It was a strange incident, given her well-off appearance. Still, though, Guangzhou felt a safe and friendly city, with singers belting out cheesy tunes on street corners, and hawkers selling everything from tissues to socks to iPhone chargers from stretched out blankets on the pavement late at night.

Day 16 had begun in bizarre fashion as Mrs S, Jasper and Ben set their alarms for 0630 to squeeze in a swim at the Sofitel pool. While Kitty and I continued to snooze, the three early-birds skipped off to seventh floor for a bracing splash in the plush surroundings.

“You want to swim?” the attendant asked, instantly vaulting herself into an odds-on favourite for the unnecessary question of the year award given the three were dressed in swimming costumes.

“Yes.”

“Do you have caps?”

“No”

Pretty soon, though, the three were in the pool standing out like three Swan Vesta matchsticks, Mrs S with a bright pink hire hat and the boys with blue bonces.

Their swim was followed by a dip in a hi-tech Jacuzzi before a

swift fly-by of the breakfast room, where the Shinettes bagged some croissants for me while I paid the bill and lined up China’s greatest ambassador/taxi driver to take us to the bullet-train.

Somehow the weight of our bags, actually my bag, has increased to a staggering degree. I suspect all the jade, whistles, key rings and fridge magnets from our odyssey so far are hidden away among my things. So too are the bottles of wine we stocked up on in Hong Kong for the six-day Trans-Siberian adventure — although I don’t resent that cargo nearly so much.

The train station is a shimmering steel and glass palace. No expense has been spared in its construction, as China shows of its wealth to the world. Like at the Sofitel, there are a noticeable number of Africans in the station — a sure sign of the increasing business links between China and African nations.

Our G80 train is scheduled to leave at 10:00 from Gate A17; and there is much excitement as the clock ticks down. We are told we can begin to queue at 09:40, but by then there must be 200 or so passengers pushing, shoving, shouting and, in some cases, conducting screaming rows with their neighbours.

What appears to be a school orchestra is sharing our train, and chattering children queue up chewing gum and carrying violins, violas, bassoons and clarinets… I made the mistake of getting up from my seat to take a photograph and before I had even straightened my legs a young woman had darted behind me and into my chair, nestled among our bags and family, and was sitting looking very pleased with her acquisition.

Just then our rail crew marched past in starched uniform, each in-step like a Pyeongyang marching band.

the chaos of the queue…

The morass of squabbling humanity parted briefly to let them through and then resumed their pushing in, shoving and scolding.

Once on our sleek steel cigar tube we quickly found our seats — row 5 in carriage 1 — and settled down for an 8-hour journey; iPads fully charged, colouring books and paper replenished.

Guangzhou’s outskirts and environs flew past… grey industrial sprawl, broken up by scrubland, before finally ceding way to proper countryside, the China of paddy fields and pointed mountains.

Mrs S is thrilled to be back in China for the first time since 1989 but recognises little of old country in the modern economic superpower of today.

Everybody settles down for the long journey. Some put slippers on, some pile suitcases high to make a card table for Tsingtao-fuelled card games, while others read or watch handheld screens.

The boy in front, meanwhile, eats. Prodigiously.

The Little Emperor

A little emperor, pandered to by his doting mother, Pig-Boy polishes off a Dove chocolate bar, a bottle of coke and a canister of Menthos fruit chews before the lunch cart has arrived. He then inhales an entire tray of beef, duck, vegetables, noodles, century egg, rice, vegetables, potatoes, curry and pickles. He does all this at breakneck speed before squeezing his fat toes into sandals and waddling off to the loo, presumably to make room for round two.

As he lurches unsteadily to the back of the train, the man in the row opposite heralds Pig-Boy’s departure with a long, loud and resonant belch, eliciting grins and looks of delight from the Shine boys.

Soon he is back, though, and he gives me a long, steady look as he eyes a pot of nuts on my table, as though he were weighing up the option of fighting me for the snack, but then he passes and turns his attention to another Dove chocolate bar and his iPhone.

The train settles into its rhythm and its inhabitants start to spill out from their seats and reveal their characters. Some are noisy, some quiet, some smile, some scowl, some curl up, others sprawl over their seats, their legs and arms spilling onto adjacent positions.

There is a restaurant carriage halfway down the train, past the card-playing drinkers and the sleepers and snoozers, but the menus are entirely in Chinese and no packet or package bears resemblance to any food I can identify.

Pigsy in action…

“It looks like the aisle in the supermarket where you don’t know what anything is,” smiled Mrs S. “The drinks selection looked to me like olive oil, rice wine vinegar and soya bean juice. I haven’t a clue what anything is.”

Eventually having said ‘Water’ a dozen times, fruitlessly, I lean over the counter and scoop up a plastic bottle of water. It is only when I get back to my seat and slake my thirst that I realise I am drinking aspartame-charged peach-flavoured “water drink”…

Still we rattle through rural China, Beijing-bound. But any real hope of seeing a slice of life from our high-speed train as we rocket past fields villages was once again scuppered by the triumphant blind-pullers, who block out all reality to better see their phone screens and laptops.

Pigsy pulls his blind down, gives up on headphones (too tight, perhaps) and turns the volume of his iPhone up to full before flooding the carriage with noises of parrots screeching and elephants trumpeting as he marauds around the jungle killing Big Game on his screen.

And still the tinny music vies with iPhone sound effects, and still the food trolley travels up and down doling out pot noodles sweetened water.

Pigsy reaches in for his third Dove bar and by this stage his feet are twitching and he’s waggling his head – this is one little emperor super-charged on sugar.

We fizz along at 300km/h or so, only stopping every two hours at stations that look brand new and hi-tech. The view, when not obscured by white canvas blinds, is of cloudless blue skies and agricultural land broken up by low-rise settlements.

Almost unannounced we pull into Beijing and at once the sheer scale of everything about the place makes us feel very small.

We have one night in this great city before catching the Trans-Siberian bound for Moscow.

See the sights, hear the sounds, (be thankful you cannot smell the smells)…

Danang Railway Station — and the Beast arrives…

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… 

 

 

July 8. Danang and Hoi An. A day of two halves.

I won’t lie to you, I was a bit over Vietnam when I woke up at 05:40 this morning, my train carriage rocking and Vietnamese cigarette smoke still seeping under the door as it had all night. A crone was rattling the handle of the heavy cast-iron door trying to get in — to offer us some coffee, it turns out — and the cockroaches were leisurely heading back to their holes after a night, presumably, crawling all over my family.

Dear GOD, let it be over…

SE2 is a beast of a train in which nothing seems to fit. The doors don’t quite fit their frames, and swing and rattle about as the train lumbers along. The carriages don’t fit together snugly, leaving fairly large gaps of daylight to step over when moving from one to another. The windows are scratched, or dirty, or both, the nylon curtains hang limply in a forlorn twisted ponytail and I won’t begin to describe the mattresses.

In all, we were penned into our mobile cell for something like 16 hours, only slipping out for a sporadic paddle in some urine or, as others might call it, to go to the loo.

Oh come on dad, it isn’t THAT bad, smiles Jasper the ultimate glass-half-full boy

If a train’s purpose, though, is to transport from A to B then fair’s fair, it did its job adequately and if the journey was a low-point in our Vietnam experience, then our arrival in Danang — or more accurately, Hoi An — was definitely a high.

Shut UP, Jasper, it IS that bad, says Ben, the glass-half-empty one…

The Victoria Beach Resort proved just the tonic after our journey, and after a particularly long and vigorous scrub in the shower we headed out for a swim.

That magical elixir of pool water instantly put a stop to the Shinettes’ squabbles which had plagued our day since waking. Mrs S disappeared off for well-deserved massage (did I mention she didn’t get any sleep all night because she was sharing a sliver of mattres with a headbutting-tossing-and-turning Kitty) and all was well with the world again.

Kitty did fall headfirst into a fish pond while I was in sole charge, but we didn’t let that spoil the newly positive tone.

And relaaaaaaaaaax. Pool action…

All was well with the world (so long as we banished from our minds the prospect of the Danang to Hanoi train later this week on the same accursed SE2) and it was with a spring in our step that we gathered up the kids and jumped on a mini-bus to Hoi An.

This city on the South Central coast of Vietnam contains a World Heritage Site in its Old Town, and is a marvel of care and careful planning.

While much of southeast Asia is racing to turn itself into a building site/rubbish tip in the pursuit of dollars, Hoi An, or the Vietnamese government, hearteningly sees profit in preservation.

Smile, you’re in Hoi An

The riverfront, illuminated by hundreds of lanterns, is breathtaking and each winding street is lined with colonial style buildings and shophouses.

Hoi An must be one of the cleanest cities I have visited, with the least aggressive hawkers and friendliest locals. There is a clean, friendly feel to the place at stark odds to our train experience. The food was spectacular, the streets safe and appealing. We only poked our noses into it for an hour before scooting the kids back to bed, but look forward to adventuring more tomorrow…

Images of Hoi An:

Riverfront

 

Someone’s been drinking falling down juice by the look of it…

 There *is* no wrong turn in Hoi An…