Around Jinan

I left Beijing on an overnight "hard sleeper"; triple stacked open bunks in a dorm-like carriage, crammed with people and baggage. A woman on the bunk across from me inquired softly where I was from in perfect English - it transpired she taught English and business at a University in Beijing.

I arrived in Jinan in the pouring rain, and checked into a small hostel beside a pond, with delicate carved bridges over adjoining pools. The staff spoke no English (many hostels in China are primarily for Chinese people), and I was shown to a compact damp private room, smelling of mildew and with only a small fan to stave off the cloying heat.

Jinan was a depressing sodden sight, any character long ago obliterated by identikit corporate offices and municipal white-tile high-rise apartments. Down a side-street I found the crumbling remains of an old temple, roughly walled off to deter would be visitors. The fabled springs had been callously surrounded by overpriced touristy parks, with the exception of a a jewel-like temple, sat like an oasis in the centre of looming corporate offices. Inside through the incense smoke, a statue of the God of War guards menacingly over his domain.

The next day I woke early to find a hidden village 60 km outside Jinan, recommended in the LP. At the long distance bus station I bought a ticket from a brisk, glum-looking woman, and boarded a modern air conditioned bus which sped us along flooded dirt tracks, crashing and lurching through swollen brown puddles and growing streams, dodging through the thick traffic. The city disappeared behind, and the roadside turned to muddled checkerboard fields of corn and lilies, with steep sided mountains behind rising into grey-brown mist, and the occasional dark temple silhouetted on a peak.

I was dropped unceremoniously at a chaotic mid station, buzzing with criss-crossing buses taxis and tuk-tuks, and shouting traders and hawkers, huddled in shacks from the incessant thin drizzle. A group of gleeful taxis driver eagerly crowded round, offered to take me to the village for 10 times the bus fare. I waved them away, and eventually found my rickety onward bus. The local villagers in the bus eyed me warily.

Three hours after I set off, I was dropped in the outskirts of the sleepy village. The whole place seemed deserted, and I drifted along the path between dry-stone walled gardens, and solid stone and mud houses. The ramshackle village wound its way through a steep- sided valley. The occasional duck or goat wandered across the path, and middled aged women with lined faces, bent over carrying huge bundles of firewood passed with mildly suspicious grins. I had somehow traveled back in China's feudal past - the crashing modernism of the cities a distant dream. The calm was disconcerting. I climbed to the peak of a small hill overlooking the village, and surveyed the mist shrouded vista from the balcony of a narrow temple, as giant dragonflies drifted lazily around me.

China

I know, I know, I'm a bad blogger. It's so hard to consolidate your thoughts in a crazy place like this. So I'm afraid it's bullet points:

- Bikes. Millions of them. Half of them electric. Despite having huge pollution problems, Beijingers probably own more electric vehicles than the rest of the world put together. They zip silently along the cycle lanes, effortlessly, making you wonder why everyone in the world doesn't own an electric bike. This along with the electric trolley buses, and natural gas powered buses, should make this the most pollution free city in the world. It isn't. The other 10 million petrol cars might have something to do with it.

- Beijing is READY for the Olympic Games. No Question. The state TV station says so, so it must be true. They staged a televised debate between two experts (both from the Chinese Olympic committee), and they both agreed that everything is going according to plan. So there you have it. Ignore any complete chaos that suggests otherwise.

- Beards amuse the Chinese.

-Never judge a restaurant by it's cover. The more brightly lit, and the dirtier the floor, the better. Order half what you think you will need. And order quickly.

- I didn't think I was a fussy eater. I was deluding myself. It turns out I am extremely picky. I won't eat insects, bones, elbows or knees (of mammals and birds), dogs, cats, most amphibians and reptiles, most land-dwelling invertebrates, eyes (of any species) eggs (fertilised), spinal cords (or other major nerves, when served plain), feet or heads, or endangered species. This can be limiting.

Great Firewall of China

I will write a longer post on China soon, but in the meantime, I just wanted to note the difficulties that one encounters with internet access. I can access my Gmail email no problem, and the Guardian website is unrestricted. But access to BBC news is blocked, as is access to ALL blogs, including my own. I can, however, update my blog. Weird.

Swimming in Siberia and drowning in Mongolia

You'll have to excuse me if this post isn't up to my usual (poor) level of English. My brain is frazzled after a night sampling the Beijing clubbing scene (bizarre to say the least), and a day tramping around in the baking humidity and smog of China's capital.

So much traveling, so many experiences - there is a danger it will turn into a blur unless I write some of it down.

Irkutsk is a sleepy, messy, tumbledown city; a ragged collection of soviet blocks, and charming whimsical old wooden houses, with an almost continental feel. The buildings appear to be slowly sinking into the ground, as if the whole city is too exhausted to protest. Walking the tree-lined avenues, it's sad to see a number of houses recently burned to the ground (apparently under sinister, government related circumstances), and indeed a further historic house mysteriously caught fire during my short stay. The river through the city, which widens to enter lake Baikal, has a charming little island, with an abandoned open-air concert venue, reminiscent of a miniature Sydney Opera house.

I took a bus to the lake, and staying in a charming Dasha, run by a sweet middle aged woman. My room was adorned with old soviet posters, a giant sized painting of Lenin, and an old record player, complete with 1960's 7 inches of patriotic Russian marching songs.

The next day I walked into a small village on the side of the lake, and took a short boat tour from an old man with and aging but capable skiff. Later I ate smoked Omul (which only lives in lake Baikal), and swam in the freezing but crystal clear water. I semi-deliberately missed my bus back to town, and stayed the night in an actually rather fancy hostel (my first indulgence of the trip). In the morning I took a fantastic old Hydrofoil back into the city.

The train from Irkutsk to Mongolia was crowded entirely with Mongolians, with the exception of my couchette, which contained a wonderful Spanish couple, Pedro and Eva. They were traveling non-stop from Moscow to Ulan-Bator, and were looking forward to a shower after 5 days in the train.

The Russian border crossing took 8 hours, the only relief being an impromptu shower from a man washing his car beside the station. Afterwards the landscape through the train window gradually changed, with birch trees giving way to barren plains, dotted with Yurts.

Ulan-Bator is a strange city - part Metropolis, part slum, part campsite. The people are well dressed, but it is immediately clear that you are in the 3rd world. Almost immediately after arriving, I set off with my new Spanish friends on a two day excursion to a traditional Yurt camp in the nearby national park (eg a simulacrum of traditional Mongolian life - ecotourism if you will).

We trekked and rode tiny protesting Mongolian horses across the plains, and on the second day rode for 4 hours through the most incredible freak rain storm. The rain continued through the night, turning our cozy Yurt into a sauna, as the cental wooded stove heated the tent to boiling temperature, and dried our sodden clothes strung from the decorated roof supports.

We spent a last day visiting ornate but somewhat shabby Buddhist temples in Ulan Bator, and walking through the ramshackle slums, filled with children playing improvised games in the caked mud paths, and older men playing pool on outdoor tables. The next day I left my hostel early and boarded the contrastingly smart and efficient train to China...