Sunset and Sunrise Mission 2015! (Part 2)

Welcome to part 2 of my 2015 Sunset and Sunrise Mission! Click here if you missed part one.

To recap, the aim is to see a sunrise or sunset in every country we visit. This installment includes China, Japan, Mongolia, Finland and Estonia:

China
I like this photo less for the sunset than the reminder of the fun day Sarah, Rob and I had at the Summer Palace in Beijing. The scale of the Summer Palace is really impressive and there is so many different areas to explore. 

Japan
I was pretty unhappy with my Japan efforts. We never seemed to be at the right place at the right time to capture a sunset or sunrise. Nevertheless, I did see this sunset from a Takayama bridge one evening.

Mongolia
Mongolia certainly took commitment as the days were very long. In fact, we left just before summer solstice so they were some of the longest of the year. The sun would set around 11pm and rise so early that I have blocked out the time.

Here are three sunsets we enjoyed most and one sunrise:

Stormy Gobi sunset

Gobi goat meeting at sunset

Sunset friend in the Gobi

Lake Khuvsgal sunrise 

Estonia
The beautiful city of Tallinn at the beginning of a sunset. 

Fairytale

Finland
The only Finnish sunset that I photographed was on our very last night in Helsinki. Basically I remembered my mission and ran downstairs in my pyjamas to capture a tram in the sunset. A flatter road and this could be somewhere in St Kilda.

Melbourne or Finland?

Part I - The Planning - Entering Mongolia (Travel Dream!)

The key is flexibility!

I've heard too many horror stories, and experienced a few too, so we really wanted to make the Chinese to Mongolia border crossing an enjoyable but painless one.  If I were to rate the desired experience on a scale, I'd put it "somewhere on the scale of nothing like Thailand to Vietnam" and "more adventurous than Vietnam to Cambodia" (which it seems we never wrote about).

Originally, we were to traverse the great Eurasian continent by train, from Beijing to Ulaanbataar to Irkutsk to Moscow and Saint Petersburg.  Timetables and our own deadlines dictated that we would have only spent 5 days in Ulaanbataaar, something with which we were always a little uncomfortable.  In a strange set of circumstances, what with the Russian visa development, [maybe] meeting Oliver in Helsinki, Christine in Dublin and having already purchased tickets to connect the two; AND the Great Chinese Firewall standing between us and a functioning PayPal account* (needed to buy Beijing-UB train tickets from CITS), we made the decision to spend the period of time between our Chinese visas expiring (late May) and our flight from Helsinki to Dublin (early July), in Mongolia.  The Russians [sort of] didn't want us, so this plan really was the only semi-logical one that had the bonus of allowing as much longer in Mongolia than originally planned.

While making our plans to get to Ulaanbataar, we realised that the "Trans-Mongolian" itself was a rather loose term that we could redefine to meet our own needs.  As it was a travel dream, we decided that as long as we actually saw some of Mongolia by train, we could still say we did the Trans-Mongolian, even if not from Beijing and even if not literally to cross the China/Mongolia border. 

Thanks to the amazing help of this wikitravel article and TripAdvisor contributors, we managed to get ourselves to Ulaanbataar from Beijing through a combination of public bus, metro, long-distance sleeper bus, dodgy hotel, jeep, train and a right-hand drive car (Mongolians have both left and right-hand drive, depending on whether they are Japanese or Russian cars!).

As far as booking trains through China, Mongolia and Russia goes, there is a lot of fear and a lot of misinformation (some of it intentional and some of it not).  The process is so different and so confusing that Lonely Planet even have a book dedicated to the Trans-Siberian Railway and how you navigate the fear and confusion.  We wanted to avoid some of the high prices charged by the likes of Real Russia and Vodka Train - although I am sure they do a great job of making it easier for you.  Besides the high prices, we never had a fixed address to have anything mailed to, which seemed a pre-requisite for these services. PLUS who doesn't love trying it the "independent" way?

Trains from Beijing to Ulaanbataar only leave once a week, on a Wednesday.  However, from Zamin-Uud, a tiny border town in Mongolia, they leave for Ulaanbataar daily, all we needed to do was get to the Mongolian border via long-distance bus. For inexplicable reasons, I don't think you can book the bus online or over the phone but with the help of TripAdvisor and the ever helpful "King Kong" and "Sharon" from 365 Inn (our Beijing hostel) we hatched a plan.  

The Plan

1. 27 May - Muxiyuan Long Distance Bus Station, Beijing, China

2. 27 May - overnight bus to Zamin-Uud, "Outer Mongolia" as the Chinese refer to the Mongolian People's Republic.  We were very desperate to ensure that we took a bus to Zamin-Uud and not to Erlian, the Chinese border town; our understanding was that border processing would be a lot easier if we could just stay on the bus (you cannot cross the Chinese/Mongolian border on foot).

3. 28 May - overnight train to Ulaanbataar train station.

4. 29 May - pickup from Sunpath Mongolia (one of THE GREATEST organisations we have come across on this trip).

For "The Execution" you will need to read Part II of this entry!  Stay tuned!

*In a horror story that is still not resolved, PayPal suspended access to both of our accounts due to "unusual activity", a situation we were not able to resolve even with 2 weeks in Japan (outside the Great Firewall) and meant that we were unable to pay for our train tickets from Beijing to Ulaanbataar online.  I highly recommend anyone planning to go on a trip like this, that you setup multiple PayPal accounts, just in case they arbitrarily decide to freeze your account.  Here is a link to a discussion about where this has had nasty consequences.

Westeros...I mean Beijing

Beijing was great, especially as Sarah the China Fairy met us there for a wonderful week of travel. It wasn't long into our trip that we realised that perhaps we had wandered into Westeros instead of Beijing.* 

If you haven't seen or read the Song of Ice and Fire (AKA Game of Thrones), this post will make no sense to you.  In which case, you probably have better things to do.  One strong recommendation would be to immediately stop what you are doing (ie. reading this) and go and read the books NOW...there's only 5 of them, get to it.

We spent our week exploring...

The Summer Palace (King's Landing)

Where we learned about the Empress Cixi and her nasty, manipulative and probably murderous rise to power.  Empress Cixi (which we imagine sounds a lot like Cersei) ruled as "regent" over a large period of the Qing dynasty.  She forced her son to marry against his will, declared war in the early 1900's on everyone around (including some pretty significant world powers at the time: the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the US).  She was probably involved in the deaths of many political opponents, was resistant to reforms and lived an indulgent life in the Summer Palace and, towards the end of her rule lived in a time of mass unrest that ultimately ended in the collapse of the Qing dynasty, not long after her death.  Probably a significant warning at the current time for a certain Cersei Lanniser of King's Landing.

The view from the Summer Palace/Red Keep

Summer Palace

How the rich live in both kingdoms

Hutongs (Fleas Bottom)

Exploring the Hutongs of Beijing was not dissimilar to Arya's early exploration of the alleyways of Flea Bottom in King's Landing, where she chased cats to work on her reflexes.  The weaving streets, the touting shopkeepers and the constant throng of people here and about, it was easy to draw the comparison.

Sarah to the Hutong Cat Cafe as Arya to the alleyways of Flea Bottom

The Great Wall of China (The Wall)

The Great Wall...well this is an easy one isn't it?  I mean, there's a huge wall in the north of Westeros.  There's a huge wall in the north of China.  Both were built to keep out a terrifying enemy.  Frozen zombies in one case, marauding Mongolians in the other.  And further, remember that Daenarys is told of a prophecy, involving a three-headed dragon.

THE WALL

The three-headed dragon!

Castle Black after the battle with the Wildlings!

The Forbidden City (Meereen)

The Forbidden City's sister would be Meereen, a stretch we'll admit...but its intimidating structures and lack of any kind of colour will have to do.

Formidable

A hot climate paired with lots of concrete!

The journey

On our voyage we were constantly met by intimidating protectors in the form of dragons, lions, stags (and probably wolves, although to be perfectly honest, we couldn't find a single one to back this theory up).  These animals all represent the strongest families of Westeros, and and there are plenty of other animal sentinels used in China that could relate to other smaller houses.

Targaryans standing guard

Baratheon on the watch

Lannisters all dressed up

Then we ventured over the border into some grassy lands.

Meeting the Mongolians (Dothraki)

Mongolians is where the next surprising association is, although you have to use a bit of your imagination.  Remember the Dothraki?  The people who live and die by their horses, a nomadic people, constantly moving to new pastures and do not trust the sea (modern Mongolians don't even have access to one).  They survive on horse meat and fermented mare's milk.  This is textbook Mongolia!  Except for the fact that the Dothraki are no where near the Wall in Westeros, the relationship between Dothraki and Mongolians is pretty strong.

A nomad with his horse

Westeros, er...I mean Beijing, was impressive and not just for the huge scale of everything in it. It is an incredible place to find yourself for a week.

*Later we found out we were certainly not the first to draw such comparisons between Westeros and Beijing. 

P.S. Interesting also to read about speculation as to why Game of Thrones is censored in China.