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Long Way To NZ
Crossed the border from Estonia into Russia on 27th May - it was a lot less difficult than I had hoped. I at least thought we would be questioned about why we are visiting Russia and maybe searched but no - our bags didn't even get scanned.
Met the old man in St Petersburg and went straight out to get food - a task that seemed to be easy that night but near impossible every other. We ended up finding only 3 decent cheap restaurants in the week. Every evening we seemed to spend hours walking around and during the day spent hours on the metro! The deepest in the world so it took long enough to get down there. The city seemed a safe enough place until Dad got his wallet stolen on a crowded metro.
The city is a great place with plenty of sights - best of all 'The Church Of Spilled Blood' - shame they are all so spread out. Great pancakes and jam was the highlight though.
Moved on to Moscow on the overnight train where I stayed in a hotel for two nights before getting on the Trans-Siberian! Had a guide show me round the Kremlin - good job too as the place is massive and I know nothing about history!
5 nights on a train! What was i thinking when I booked it? It was a Mongolian train packed full with Mongolian traders! One of the fat b******s (all the blokes have massive bellies that they like to play with) nicked $300 off me! They all had so much luggage when they got on - stuffing bags and boxes in any possible gap they could find on the train. Found out why at the first stop - there were hundreds of people on the platform waiting for the Mongolian market to arrive - they sold all fake goods bought from China. I later found out that all these people just live on the train going back and forth from Moscow to Beijing.
Activities on train were sleep, look out window, get off for 20 minutes at stations and drink beer and vodka. Time actually went pretty quick the first few days but cabin fever set in after a while. We crossed the Russian border into Mongolia on 11th June - once again less hastle than expected - only the locals seemed to be questioned about anything!
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