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Hello fine folks of TL.net,
(Update 17.11.2011: Blogpost #6.1., location Beijing, 44 days in)
Tomrrow I'm starting a 4-5 month excursion from Helsinki through Russia and Mongolia to Beijing by rails and from there on I'll head to Seoul, eastern China, Macau, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia.
What I would like to see happening in this blog is that you, the members of the best and most international community, will write suggestions about lovely places and interesting events that will be located on my upcoming journey. As these are new regions, why not try something fun and new altogether! To add a little bit of extra flavour, if you can convince me to go/do your suggestion I'll post a picture from there with a TL shirt on! (TL.net sign if shirts are smelly)
I'm pretty open minded about experiencing various stuff so try your best! If I don't catch onto your idea, maybe someone else reading this blog will.
These are the highlights I'm currently (17.11.2011) looking forward to:
Russia: Eremitage in St. Petersburg, Cosmonaut museum in Moscow (oct)
Mongolia: Sand dunes (oct, nov)
China: Great Wall of China, Forbidden palace in Beijing, meeting up with endy at Shanghai (nov, dec ,jan)
Seoul: SC:BW, SC2, meeting up with Kiett at Seoul, WCG Pusan, skiing at mountains?, New Year? (dec)
Hong Kong: Meet up with a friend from the travels (jan)
Macau: tbc (jan)
Vietnam: tbc (feb)
Laos: tbc (?)
Thailand: Beaches (?)
Cambodia: Angkor Wat (?)
Singapore: tbc (?)
Malaysia: tbc (? if $$$)
As you can see my plans are quite vague at the moment but that is the way I like to roll.
Bonus round!
If you want to go for the extra mile, why not contact me and let's meet up for a beer/coffe! You can tell me about your neighbourhoods and maybe even show the local SC2 lair. This would make my trip more special and hopefully would be fun for you too. As this is scary and personal, I'll tell something about myself in the spoilers.
+ Show Spoiler + I'm 25-year-old male (ofc) avid gamer/traveller. Started following BW scene around 2008 (go JD!), joined TL.net afterwards. Online gaming career includes QW:TF (soldier semibad), CS (semibad), DAoC (Eclipse Prydwen), WC3 (NE, ok), Guild Wars (Esoteric Warriors), SC:BW (Z, C-), SC2 (Z, Diamond). I have played couple of offline SC2 tournaments in Brussels and in NYC with nice TL people. As far as travelling goes, I have backpacked through Europe couple of times and had a longer visit in NYC. Also have lived in Brussels for 6 months and Wiesbaden, Germany for 6 months. My main communication languages are Finnish and English. You can find out more in person, hehe. As you can see my dates are a bit vague at this point but I'll be updating this thread in the future weeks (hopefully with suggestions!). If this is something you would like to do, drop me a pm. 
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eVPyXl.jpg)
TL fighting!
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I don't have any suggestions to go visit because I've never been to Asia myself even though I'm from Vietnamese descent, but I'm really, really looking forward to see what people are going to post here because I'm planning to study in Hong Kong for the fall 2012 or winter 2013 semester, and it'd be a great opportunity to visit southeast asia + korea + japan if I have the money and time. Have fun during your trip, and keep us basement lurkers posted and jealous!
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may i ask whats ur budget for ur trip?
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This sounds absolutely amazing good luck with your travels you are really lucky to be able to do something like this ;o
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Thanks a lot for replies! I'll do my best to have great time (shouldn't be too hard heh).
My budget will be as much as I have saved up, about 4k €. Maybe something will be left, maybe I have to come back earlier, who knows!
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Two things to check out throughout the trip:
Swing dancing. Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur all have small swing dancing scenes (except Seoul, which has a massive swing dancing scene). Most of them have one or two weekly socials, where they either meet at a dance venue, or a bar/restaurant, play swing jazz music, and dance. Typically at the beginning of the night or so they'll offer free beginners' lessons. So you can just go to the lessons and dances throughout the trip, and be pretty good by the end! Which is good, because in February is when Singapore has a huge swing dancing event called Sea Jam.
Hash House Harriers: "Drinking club with a running problem". Meet in the city, get on a bus with a bunch of locals and expats, run in the countryside or through some trails outside the city, drink, sing songs, come back and grab dinner. There will very likely be a group that meets at least once a week in every single city you go to.
And a few for specific cities:
Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Every other Monday is something called "Nerd Night", where locals and expats gather at a bar and give 6 minute presentations on a nerdy hobby or topic of their choice. I did one on pro StarCraft a few months ago. It's a lot of fun! And I think they started one in Siem Reap also, so if you don't go to PP you should check out the one there.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: Go to the Acoustic Cafe some night. Bar full of mostly locals, but bands come and play American and English rock music. Really cool, chill atmosphere. Address is 6E1 Ngô Thời Nhiệm, and take note of the "E"; on the street, you'll see a restaurant with the address of 6A -- there's an alleyway next to it, and the Acoustic Cafe is at the very end of that alleyway.
Da Nang and/or Hoi An, Vietnam: You should check out the Marble Mountains, really cool little mountains with lots of caves and stuff that are carved out with statues, etc. Rent a motorbike to check em out.
Hue, Vietnam: Rent a motorbike, learn to ride it on your own if you don't know how, get a map, and check out the Tombs of the Emperors. They're really cool, and in various stages of disrepair.
Hanoi, Vietnam: Be sure to take trips to Ha Long Bay and Sapa to take in the completely amazing scenery. Seriously, if for some reason you were only allowed to go to one beach town for your entire trip, I would tell you that you're a fool if you don't make it Ha Long.
Hong Kong: http://blogs.wsj.com/hong-kong/2011/02/20/hong-kongs-hidden-cafes/ Check out some of these from the article and from Openrice. Really cool and unique atmospheres, and makes you feel so "in-the-know". Cat Store is awesome.
I'll let you know if anything else comes to mind. Hope these sound interesting to you!
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Nuunuu fighting!
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Oh wow you're so lucky T__T that's awesome, have a great time!
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Wow! I'm so envious :D I'd love to do something like this eventually (I'm 21 now). What's your budget? Are you just going by yourself?
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On October 16 2011 04:37 nuunuu wrote:
Thanks a lot for replies! I'll do my best to have great time (shouldn't be too hard heh).
My budget will be as much as I have saved up, about 4k €. Maybe something will be left, maybe I have to come back earlier, who knows!
God damn, i was going to say check out the casinos in Macau, but i guess it's better to leave them (somewhat) out of the picture.
I'm jelly tho and i'm wondering are you going to blog your trip here or anywhere? In addition to this:
+ Show Spoiler +"To add a little bit of extra flavour, if you can convince me to go/do your suggestion I'll post a picture from there with a TL shirt on! (TL.net sign if shirts are smelly)"
Always interested to read travelling blogs especially from Asia.
+ Show Spoiler +pidä hauskaa. 
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I would warn you to NEVER even under the pain of torture consider going to the Philippines.
And pray to the BW gods you get to Seoul in time for the PL opening!
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Thanks Diader for very nice suggestions, sure I couldn't find those from everyday lonelyplanets. I'll make sure to put them in my thinking cap!
Ciryandor, that sounds like a perfect excuse not to visit the place if I'll run out of money. May the BW gods be with us.
Grettin, since I'v been asked that question couple of times before think I have to come into the conclusion that my duty as a traveller with a laptop is to write a blog. So from now on I'll make small updates (+tl shirt pictures ofc) on this blog which will make this blog a blog on top of other things!
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Blog post #1 Reasons behind and earlygame
The reasons which brought me to this point of writing a blog in St. Petersburg are quite simple. They are so simple that in order for this blog to have enough text I have to hype them up. So here they go: First reason is, I didn't have anything else to do. Second reason is, I heard it is fun, warm and cheap in Southeast Asia. With these two sticks as a foundation, I could start to build rest of the ladder. The steps were soon to follow. Why take a plane to Thailand/Cambodia since you can experience much more by taking Trans-Mongolian train to Bejing and go to Southeast Asia from there, I thought. Bam, a step is done. The next step was going to be built by a detour into South Korea for obvious reasons. Boom. Now I had a two-step mental ladder which could be put into use.
Commence earlygame
So, off I went google to see which countries needed visas. Three of the countries needed visas. I contacted travel agencies to do the job for me as I had not so good experiences of applying for a Russian visa by myself, let alone three visas. I made the mistake of thinking that you can apply for all of the visas at the same time, but in real life of course, passports collect dust in drawers of embassies for a week each. That put a bump on my idea of leaving late summer. After vaccinations and visas, I had spent monies worth of return flight to NY and I was still just watching streams at home! This was somewhat unexpected.
After receiving visas, earlygame continued with postponing departure due to hangovers. But I had to strenghten up since the Russian was going to expire in three weeks and I'd be having quite a lot of rails and cities to cover. So I pulled up to a railwaystation about seven or eight
and I yelled to the cabby "Yo, home smell you later"
looked at my kingdom I was finally there
to settle my throne as a passenger.
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Great to hear you are blogging your travels! Will definitely bookmark and read your experiences.
By the way, getting visas at the border(s) is better, cheaper and usually faster. So i'd do that. Just remember to keep a lot of photos of you, with you for the visas. (I'm pretty sure you already knew all of this, but i guess it doesn't hurt reminding/saying.)
Have fun man and safe travels!
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Happy travelling! Hopefully while you're travelling you get into whacky nerd adventures, all of which you could include in your blog! I'll be sure to watch for your updates!
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You're lucky, 5 months is a fucking long holiday :o
You can let me know if you wanna hang out in Shanghai.
Also I agree with Ciryandor, skip the Philippines :/
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On October 18 2011 00:47 endy wrote:
You're lucky, 5 months is a fucking long holiday :o
You can let me know if you wanna hang out in Shanghai.
Also I agree with Ciryandor, skip the Philippines :/
That sounds great, I'll send you a PM when I know when I'll be there exactly
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Blog post #2 St. Petersburg
Even though there is only 300km from Helsinki to one of the largest cities in Europe, I had never visited the place. Now was a good time to get that fix'd up. I wanted to have an easy relaxing start so instead of taking a 15e minibus from Helsinki (which are full of smelly fish and people (also maybe smelling)) I decided to take this new and shiny überfast train from Lahti for 65e.
Train was ok and all and it took me where I wanted to. On the train I got encouraged by the man next to me to eat everything in Asia since everything is so good. I'll keep that in mind.
First impressions of the city were "This is like Helsinki but 50x the scale" since all the oldskool buildings looked the same, neoclassical I think. I was in two different hostels, the first one had great helpful girls working there and had nice variety of people from Russian family's 5 year old daughter into a retired New Zealander. Other cool thing was that I could watch the finals of MLG. Second hostel was at the last corner of old railroad warehouse area on a dark alley but it gave the place more character.
To keep the blog short and compact I'm gonna leave out descriptions of the must-see places unless there is something completely awesome. Example for completely awesome would be the Alexander Column which is carved from a single piece of granite hauled from Finland. This also happened to be only insightful piece of information I had beforehand about St. Petersburg. Other cool things were: a huge arcade at the top level of a mall, missing 3/4rds of Morcheeba concert due to forgetting to change laptop's clock, maltese pro fussball guy who knew teamliquid, table icehockey in which I won 9-0 and finally having the worst seat/bed (next to toilet door) on the train to moscow so couldn't sleep. yay! Oh and birthday today also! more yay!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uYNY7l.jpg)
If you look closely you will see a horse
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wll9Ss.jpg)
12 o'clock
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Arcade fire
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Be yourself
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/V0CwOs.jpg)
Iishokkey
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Blog post #3 Something old, something new at Moscow
Tomorrow I'll be heading onto a 86 hour straight train ride into Irkutsk so think it's a good time to recap what Moscow offered to me this time.
I had contacted a friend who lives in Moscow beforehand that I'd be coming for a short visit. Since Moscow is a humongous place and I was going to stay only for two nights it was going to be easier just to book hostel from the center so I could come/go to the train station easier. Location of the hostel was great, 10 mins to Red Square, but there were no english speaking people which was a bummer. If you want to meet fellow foreign travellers, don't travel in the middle of October!
Highlight of my stay was definately meeting up with old friend and finding out that another friend of ours was coming to visit Moscow too in couple of days. Double yays! I decided to stick around for that. This is where flexible travel schedule comes in handy. Cosmonaut museum, which I had in mind beforehand, was bit of a letdown since all the descriptions were only in Russian. What made up for that was the magnificent statue outside. There was also huge soviet time exhibition area nearby in which I paid a visit too. Ferriswheel & Sojuz rocket! Later during the stay we followed the Moskva down to Gorky park and instead of listening to the winds of change we found the soviet version of the Space Shuttle randomly sitting by the river. Coolbeans
As a nice finisher we wandered into the Red Square just to see that there was gigantic (of course) lightshow taking place. The bass of the music was so loud it would have shaken Lenin in his mausoleum but I heard he is no longer hanging around there.
Being stacked up on audio books, noodles, vodka and bread I'm ready to face the longest train trip so far with happieness all around. By the way, calculate the price for one kilometer: 80e for 6800km. A bit cheaper than gasoline!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R88HKl.jpg)
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EPT
