After I returned to Bangkok I moved into a new single room in the same apartment building. The plan was to stay there for a month while I finished up some work and arranged my next travel plans, which is exactly what happened. For 5 weeks I slipped back into the blissful Bangkok rhythm of slow days, good food and occasionally loud nights. I worked only as much as I needed to and let the simple things fill up the rest of my time.

I had decided that after more than a year in and out of Thailand, it was time for me to pick up and continue traveling again. Since I want to eventually visit eastern Europe I chose to fly to Beijing, China and ride the famous trans-siberian railway all the way across Russia to Moscow. On the way I’ll stop in Mongolia and some destinations in Russia, taking around a month to make the journey, then either fly or continue overland to Sofia, Bulgaria where I can finally reunite with the great Gartholomew J. If I’m lucky I’ll also catch Mr. Joe McCraw who will end his own European tour there this month.

My sister will be joining me in Beijing and coming along to Europe, which I’m very excited about. I haven’t seen her since she visited Thailand about a year ago!

I had set up a really comfortable, easy life for myself in Bangkok so preparing to leave was hard. As the time of my exit approached, I started feeling depressed. During my last few days I tried to say goodbye to my friends and favorite places but it just made me question my decision to leave. It wasn’t until I arrived in Beijing that I was able to look at my situation from a new perspective and feel better again.

Leaving something you love behind is always difficult, but sometimes there is no other option if you want to explore the world. Bangkok will always be a plane ticket away, and I will be back again soon.

I landed in Beijing with a backpack full of clothes and a scrap of paper bearing the address of a guesthouse I found online. I knew my sister Sarah would be arriving soon, but we hadn’t set a solid time/place to meet up. I looked around for any fellow travelers who seemed to have a better idea of where they were going and met Noor from Amsterdam. She at least had an address written in Chinese - no one was able to read my english one - so I followed her onto a bus headed for the city center figuring that would be closer, at least, to my destination than the airport.

The bus did take us right where we wanted to go, but a nearby “friendly” rickshaw pilot convinced us otherwise. We paid him a small amount to take us to the hostel, but of course we didn’t get there before he showed us a “much better” one and a brief argument. At least we got a quick tour of central Beijing complete with hair-raising traffic maneuvers. Noor had arrived in Biejing after having already spent some time in Shanghai. Her Mandarin-Chinese vocabulary consists of “Hello,” Thank You,” and “Keep you eyes on the road,” all three of which get plenty of use.

The hostel turned out to be a massive YHA “tourist ghetto” style thing - hundreds of rooms, ok prices, no character whatsoever. It was good enough for a night, though, and I was tired so I took a room. Noor and I found a cheap, simple dinner at a late-night food place and I told her my story about just having left Bangkok that morning. I was feeling really down, of course, and it was nice to talk with someone who had been through the same situation before. I spent that week trying not to think about Bangkok, but i couldn’t help longing for warmer weather, Thai food and my friends. I did manage to reunite with Sarah the next morning at the Red Lantern Hostel. We moved into a double room and took to exploring the city, but unfortunately she soon developed a tooth ache. A trip to the hospital revealed an infection around her wisdom tooth. Since we had both boked tickets for the Beijing - Ulaanbator leg of the trans-siberian railway departing in just a few days, this threw off the current plan.

During the last couple days we had in Beijing I bought a new camera to finally replace the one I lost in Thailand - a Canon 400D. Sarah and I also visited the Beijing Glasses Center - the mecca of budget optometry. I bought two empty frames and had them fitted with prescription lenses for next to nothing. After we bought the glasses we started off walking randomly and eventually found ourselves in the company of an incredibly nice and helpful old Chinese gentleman. As he carefully explained the best way for us to get back to the guesthouse we were joined by another friendly Chinese guy and we all walked together to the bus stop. On the way Sarah and I decided to go instead for some Peking duck so our new friends recommended a place (which turned out to be the biggest, most famous Peking duck restaurant in China - the Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant) so we rode the bus there.

For about $16 we had an entire duck (number 362,224) to ourselves. It was the best duck I’ve ever had. We sat at the restaurant until they were closing up a couple hours later.

The next morning we woke at 5am, grumpy and tired, in order to get to the train station in time for our ride to Mongolia. Long story short: a stupid argument ensued and I ended up leaving alone for Ulaanbator. Hopefully Sarah and I can reconnect somewhere else along the way.

The train ride was lonely but comfortable. About 30 hours in total. I passed the time writing letters and sleeping - I had an entire 2-person cabin to myself since Sarah didn’t come along. We stopped at a few quiet stations on the Chinese side before a long stop at the Mongolian border. The bits of “civilisation” we passed were nothing more than a few dozen shacks clustered around a factory of kind. At the border I opted to wait the hour and a half inside the station and spend the rest of my Chinese Yuan at the shop there. I met another American traveler on the way back onto the train. Tressa was on the way back home after having spent the last 6 months in Mongolia and plenty of advice to share. She even gave me her pair of Mongolian boots (which turned out not to fit, but I passed them onto another traveler who was glad to have them).

When I arrived in UB, I took a room at the UB guesthouse (the default choice for new arrivals in Mongolia). I settled in and tried to withdraw some Mongolian cash with my card but was denied. Uh oh. I wrote some panicked emails and tried to call my bank… It took a couple days to sort out but I finally found out that it had been suspended due to “suspicous activity” ie, using it in 3 countries within a week. Thankfully, its all sorted now and I’m back in business.

This is not the long-overdue mass update that will cover my last days in Myanmar, final month+ in Bangkok, quick visit to Beijing, China and my first few days in Ulaanbatar, Mongolia. I’m just putting a quick note here to let you know that I’ll be out of touch for the next two weeks or so.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be leaving Ulaanbatar with a small group of travelers to visit Khovsgol lake in the north of Mongolia (6 days of travel). When I get to the lake, I’ll leave the group and hire a horse and guide to take me on a trek in the area around the lake for a few days, then return to Ulaanbatar via local van, which will take another couple days. I may have internet access in a couple places along the way, but its not likely.

When I return I’ll throw down the giant multi-volume update.

Until then, check out some photos from Beijing:

It’s not been easy.

Spring is not a very hospitable season here. The tourist trail that is normally well-beaten in later months is just seeing a trickle of travelers. Supplies are low, the weather is rough and the tourist-friendly establishments are generally closed. In a way, its a good time to be here. The busy spots are quiet, the prices are a little lower. But the seasons here, across the vast, dry, empty plains, bring drastic changes. Right now, the otherwise green hills are brown. What precious little rain Mongolia sees has yet to come and the snow has only just begun to melt. The livestock have grown thin without fresh grass to eat and the people are waiting until summer arrives to slaughter them for meat. The horses, now mostly turned loose to survive on their own, are also weak. The country is still recovering from the hard winter.

I joined a small tour group of 6 organized by UB guesthouse rather than trying to make my own way as I normally do. There is no public transportation outside of Ulaanbator aside from a tiny length of train tracks in the center of the country. To get somewhere, there are few options: walk, ride a horse or camel, or buy a seat in a Russian van. For my first excursion, the tourist van looked like a good choice. The tour was headed for Khovsgol National Park, home of the great frozen Lake Khovsgol, with stops in Karakorum, the White Lakes and Moron. I planned to leave the group in Khovsgol and do an extended trip on horseback to the far north.

The line-up: Inge and Joan from Antwerp, Belgium, Basil and Flavie from Lioux, France and another Frenchman, Greg. And me.

Day 1 brought us to the ancient capital of the Mongolian empire. Before I came to Mongolia, I didn’t realize that at one point Chengis Khan’s rule extended to every corner of continental Asia and even a bit beyond to form what was the largest empire in history. What was probably an impressive sight during the 13th and 14th centuries is now not much to write home about. A complex of crumbling temples and a (still active) monastery enclosed within 4 long walls is all that remains after the Russians demolished most everything else. We spent the night in a ger (traditional Mongolian home) and walked the grounds in the morning before continuing to the White Lakes.

About 9 hours later we arrived at a ger camp a few kms from the lake. The arrangement was the same as before - one that I would become rather accustomed to over the next few weeks - no running water, no electricity, pit toilet. In the evening when we arrived, the ground was bare but the sky was grey. We awoke to a blanket of fresh snow, which continued to fall all of the next day which we spent at the camp.

Four of us opted to take a guided horse trip to the lake. The camp family dressed us up in thick traditional Mongolian coats and sent us off on 4 of their slowest horses. Because of the weather, visibility was low and there wasn’t much to see at the lake. It is still frozen so we walked out onto the edge of it, but didn’t stay long since we were all freezing. I spent the rest of the day by the fire.

In the evening we celebrated the birthday of another traveler staying in the ger next-door with a few bottles of vodka.