Trans Siberian Railway - Moscow

Saturday 29th June

Crossing the Russian Border...
Hamburgers and cake for breakfast at the hotel this morning. Yuck. Another trip to the State Department store this morning to stock up on food for the two-night train to Irkutsk in Russia. Jolene and I share a lot of stuff to make it cheaper. Most things have to be of the ´just add water´ variety so we buy instant soup and packet noodles. Also fruit. Lunch at the Millenium restaurant again (chicken roulette - it might be chicken.... it might not..).

Dinner that evening was with Tuya (by the way - Kaoru, Ikuyo and Andrea ' Tuya and Mia say hi how are you)...which was nice chance for us to do something for her (pay for her) as she had been so great as a tour guide. Very traditional filling Mongolian food ' meet dumplings, meat pasties, noodles, very colourful salad... the Mongolians believe that eating fish is heathen or beneath them as they are gatherers not hunters. So no fish anywhere on the menus. But anyway, huge feast and then onto the overnight train. Train was fairly dirty with smelly toilets. Made us all wonder about the thre days and three nights we have coming up on the Trans Siberian. Played a lot of card games (Asshole) which Christina kept mysteriously winning, making me the asshole all the time.... very annoying! Lots of long and seeming pointless stops along the way. 2 hours at the Mongolian border flling in forms and then after a half hour ride to the Russian border, followed by a tedious seven hour wait while they checked our visas and we filled in more forms. We'd arrived finally about 6.00am and didn´t get underway until 4pm next day.

Lots of talk in the cabin solving the problems of the world. Paul is a complete git. Keeps prattling on about Australia and how much money he earns and how completely great he thinks he is, whilst making lewd comments about women trying to bait us all and then saying things like we should all be able to walk around naked and not be stared at! A complete loser. He´s a sad old git who´s done a heap of travelling without actually seeing anything... there's always one in the group'.