Since I last wrote we have toured Potala Palace and Jokan Temple and flown to  Chongqing, maybe the largest  city in the world with population over 33 million stretching for miles (kilometers) along the Yangtze River. This is where we bordered our river boat MV Victoria Lliana for three days and over 640 kilometers of down river passage through the 3 gorges and passed the 3 Gorges Dam through  the 5 step shiplock. Our entire group had chosen the Executive Deck and given the light passenger load we had the Executive Deck dining room to ourselves. We were served by Sunshine and Rainbow who learned our names almost immediately. We were greeted and served our preferences without having to ask. Talk about about spoiled.  Note to anyone thinking about this trip, DO NOT miss it and do not take passage on the lower decks. The Chinese do not understand the term “No Smoking”.  The water may be 150 meters up, but the gorges are still massive and very deep. I cannot even imagine what they must have been before the dam.  The lower section we traveled was very rough before the dam and today it is serene sailing.  We considered  both sides of the argument for the construction of the dam and while we understand the negative ecological impact of the flooding, we also see the immense benefit of the dam for hydropower, flood  control, and irrigation. We concluded the trip on the river just below the dam and faced a 5 hour bus ride to get to Wuhan where we stayed overnight before catching a plane to Hong Kong.

Out from behind the firewall!  The phrase “one country, two systems” takes on new meaning upon entering Hong Hong. While it is not truly western,  it certainly has a feel of freedom. Not the least it is seen  in what is available online; Facebook, Google,  NYTimes, and all my blogging and RV Forums are now live. It is seen in billboards, and peoples faces. Even more are the crowds! Yesterday as we walked about within long walking distance of our hotel to several market areas we seemed to receive the full body massage no matter where we turned. This is not a place for those who do not like crowds.  Think Times Square on New Years Eve, or in Rochester, the Cornhill Festival on a perfect weather day.

Sunday had us out and about again. This time we ventured by bus to Stanley Beach/Market/Plaza. We arrived mid morning to find the crowd starting to build.  By lunch time, when we had split off from the group we arrived with, the crowds had continued to grow, with seemingly every family that had a child descending on the place. We enjoyed touring and shopping and had a delightful lunch at a place called Classified . Then we found our way back to the bus terminal and boarded a bus back into town. Not being familiar with the stops on the way  back, we stayed on one stop too far.  Once we got oriented we enjoyed the 15 minute walk back to the hotel.

Tonight is our fairwell dinner and four of us will continue on to Siem Reap,  the capital of Cambodia in the early afternoon.

A quick update.  Our flight from Moscow took off at 3PM, only 4 hours 40 minutes late without so much as a “we’re sorry” until we landed at 3:15 AM. Other than that the flight was very nice,  the food was plentiful and good and the indoor of the plane was on great need of updating.  The video entertainment was a three pound tablet with a smaller screen than my tablet and no place to rest it in a viable position.  It went directly into the storage pocket only to be sent at the end of the flight. Reading and sleeping torrent with eating condoned the time quite well.

We were dropped at the hotel by city guide Andy at 5 AM or so and found our way to our room where we slept until 9:30 awakening in time to rush to the dining room and grab some breakfast before they cleared the buffet away. After meeting our Tour Leader, Michael, (they all seem to have Americanized names for leading American groups) we set out to walk to Nanking (or maybe Nanjing) road which is very long long pedestrian shopping street. We spent our afternoon walking and window shopping.  We wondered off onto a side Street where we found a local restaurant where we ordered too much for lunch.  I decided not to have one of the bullfrog dishes.  May after some time here that may not put me of my feed,  but I’m not there yet.

We dined at the hotel restaurant restaurant,  once we found it.  A trip to the 2nd floor brought us to the Leningrad Bar. I decided me must have been pushed through a time warp as the main offering was vodka and the snacks were Russian dishes,  also the primary section of the menu as written in Cyrillic! 

This morning,  Saturday I think,  we met or new group and spent the day touring.  The highlight was the Shanghai Museum where the 2 hours of alloted time was enough for one of the 4 floors and a run through of the others the special exhibit of French Impressionists was not available  to us and the lines for those with tickets were hours long.  Dinner with the group in an hour.  Now I must truck on down to the lobby to use the wifi to get this out.

It seems that most of my apps for writing require an internet connection for writing. I have lost what I wrote since Shanghai to lousy internet connections. I will try to recapture my impressions here. This may be a longish post as I cover 4 days in and around Shanghai and a like amount in Beijing. I will start with some general thoughts about China and the Chinese. Much of our experience has been noted by many other travelers from the West. China is crowded. Shanghai has 23 million resident population and Beijing 33 million. Everything feels crowded and compressed. The people seem extremely rude as their sense of personal space is much closer than ours. They take jostling against each other as normal. For an example on our visit to the Forbidden City as we tried to get a view of the throne in the first pavillion rather than queuing and filing past they jammed the stairs and platform and the only way to get near was to be pushy. Carol felt threatened by the scrum and backed out. I got to the front and experience a full body massage, my pictures are useless as everytime I got something in the viewfinder I was shoved aside or someone pushed in front of me.

Traffic is beyond belief. LA Freeways at their worst are mild in comparison. Any trip could be from 1 to 3 hours and the mix of cars, busses and 2 and 3 wheelers of all sizes  going in all directions makes trying to make sense of the flow bizarre. Walking across a marked intersection with the light is dangerous as bicycles, peddled, gas powered, electric powered pay no attention to lights and cars turn right on red without even slowing down. John, the English name of our Beijing guide, advised that we cross like sticky rice, in a tight clump that would intimidate riders who are inclined to thread through a loose group rather than give ground to anyone. It worked mostly, no one got hit, but it was close several times.

In Shanghai we saw much of what is on the tourist menu starting with the Shanghai Museum.  We walked the Bund, the Whampoa River front, both with the group and on our own after dark. We walked  Nanjing Pedestrian Road which is a mile long shopping strip with every high end shop you can imagine, plus KFC, McDonald’s,  and Subway.  We ate at a couple of local restaurants that we selected on our own and successfully shopped in a drug store for masks against the smog. Haven’t opened the package yet, but the air has been dreadful most every morning. We visited two areas in the Shanghai area, Zhu Jia Jiao and Suzhou which was 40 minutes on the Bullet Train which reached 298 kph according to the onboard screen. In both towns we had boat rides, visited markets and toured gardens. These gardens are actually homes built around elaborate gardens featuring water, wood, stone and buildings. The higher the status of the owner the more elaborate the garden. On our last day in Shanghai we toured a very high status garden that was 18 years in development in 1557. After lunch in a private home we flew to Beijing.

We did what is required in Beijing. We toured Tiananmen  Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.  The Forbidden City, being the Emperor’s home contains the second most fantastic garden we have seen, the Summer Palace takes credit for being the most fantastic with its 758 meter long  corridor and the Marble Boat. Except for the Great Wall these were all as expected from other traveler’s reports and photos. We were concerned that the attack in Tiananmen Square would prevent our visit, but everything was cleaned up as if nothing had happened 24 hours later. Our visit to the Great Wall was incredible. We went to a section that is seldom visited by tour groups as it is 15 kilometers further and in a much poorer state of repair not to mention that it is not the most famous photo op that everyone takes. We were the only group on the wall and there were only a dozen or so others we saw whole time we were there. Our entire group climbed onto the wall and then ascended 700 uneven steps to the high point in the area. Michael, our tour leader, has lead many groups and was surprised that everyone  made the entire climb, we range in age from 61 to 78, and the eldest does not seem to be in any kind of shape,  but he made it, just more slowly than the rest of us. We have toured enough factories, silk, carpet, and jade tomorrow to make me wish for a tour of an electronics factory. The working conditions we have observed leave a lot to be desired.  I did buy a silk shirt.

We have attended an acrobat show and a made for tourists Chinese opera.  The latter was after visiting the opera school where 10 year olds to 19 year olds learn the craft while also getting a academic education.  Travel in Beijing culminated with an overnight train ride to  Xi’An whwere the highlight will be the Terracotta Army. We saw some magnificent szmples of them at the Xi’an Museum this afternoon.  The train ride was an experience I do not need to repeat. We were in first class cabins with four bunks, OAT had bought all four for each couple. We had less room than in the motorhome bedroom, the tracks were not smooth and the car  rattled. There was one western style toilet for the car and three sinks in one separate cabin. I slept fairly well, Carol didn’t.

To get current, we had Mongolian hot pot dinner tonight and for of us took Michael up on his offer to see the sound, light and water show on the grounds of the Large Wild Goose Pagoda. We walked over from our hotel and saw a 30 minute show. The fountains were great the lights were okay and the music was strange to say the least.  Along with some Chinese numbers they played William Tell Overture,  selections from Carmen and other Western music.  Glad we went,  glad to be back on the hotel room with good wifi for two nights. I cannot begin to guess what future nights will bring.

We awoke 15 minutes earlier than usual to have our checked luggage out the door at 6:45 for departure to Shanghai.  We managed to get breakfast in by opening the dining room 5 minutes early and choking down some food before being in the cab at 7:15. Despite my concerns about traffic we walked into the terminal at 8:15 two hours before scheduled departure,  whew. But wait what are these extra passes we have been handed? Complimentary meals?  Uh oh. The flight is delayed 3 hours and 40 minutes.  We were not planning on using the business class lounge here,  but now we will have plenty of time to enjoy the luxury of waiting in relative comfort.  Of course we will arrive in Shanghai at something like 2:40 AM if we actually take off at 2 PM. More news on that as we experience the joys of travel.

Thinking about 5 countries and 7 cities over the 22 days so far.  This area like so many others has been fought over,  conquered and freed from conquerors so often in the last century it is hard to grasp what the people have lived through.  In the USA we have had one bloody internecine war in our history since independence and that was 150 years ago.  The most recent change in governance in this region was 1991! That was when the Baltic nations became independent from USSR for the first time since 1941 (and the USSR ceased to exist). These are people for whom the only choice was rule by Nazis or Soviet Union who ever was in control at the moment.  Hobson’s choice which is to say no choice at all,  both sides slaughtered or deported those they saw as dissidents. Russia is finding itself too as a much smaller country,  missing Ukraine which is comparable in size to Texas and is the second biggest country in Europe after European Russia.  Each of the Baltic States are best compared to our small states,  NJ,  Connecticut,  etc. Their population of about 1,000,000 each consists of  one third pensioners and about one third employed.  This is not a good population base on which to build an economy especially as there is significant “brain drain” from each of them as the young graduate from very good inexpensive universities and head out to find satisfactory employment elsewhere.  For many of us the Baltic States did not exist at all as we read about world politics through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

As we prepare to head to China which has yet to really break the bonds of totalitarian rule,  I wonder what the future will be as Russia continues to squeeze the Baltic nations to prevent their deepening involvement with the EU and NATO.  This is playing out today.  Our course will continue to take us to killing fields. We may be less emotionally pained as these are not our close family, but nonetheless they are family of man.  As we sat as a group over the last several days I wondered where we might go in our travels to not find a place of pain.  Carol and I concluded that the nature of humans is such that there is no such place.  The US may not have recent history,  but certainly our ancestor’s treatment of the natives has not been without death and deportation, nor has our northern neighbor Canada’s history been clean on that regard. 

I will continue to revel in the joy of travel and accept that amid the beauty and grandeur that we see there will be reminders of pain and savagery. 

We sat and talked with Yechiel this morning (for us) and we were able to see each other as we spoke across 11 time zones using Google hangouts on my tablet.  This was a dream at the 1964 World’s Fair when we were newlyweds and today it is essentially cost free. 

The grand spaces in Moscow,  Red Square and the Victory Park are so huge as to be daunting and yet we look forward to seeing  Tianimen Square which is said to dwarf them.  The beauty of the gold onion domes of Moscow (candles to G-d) make it truly look like a fairy tale invention and the ancient places we visited all along the way are with me in mind’s eye and in digital images which are too many to share or even sort through as we add new ones each day.

I ramble because I am trying to record impressions not necessarily a coherent story.  Please forgive my wandering from subject to subject,  maybe someday I’ll edit this blog,  somehow I doubt it.

Or Moscow in two and a half days on a dead run.

We were met at the airport by Lara who escorted us by mini van to our hotel where we went directly to lunch without passing “go” and collecting $200. After lunch we went to our rooms to find the luggage waiting and enough time to figure out how to operate the safe and freshen up for our tour of Red Square and GUM the major department store that has stood on one edge of the square for 120 years.  We got yelled at for being late coming down from our rooms as there was no place to park the mini van and he was tying up traffic illegally while waiting,  as if anything could make this traffic worse.  Dinner was not included and four of us set out up the street to a Scottish (!) Restaurant.  It was quite good and we enjoyed ourselves.  I couldn’t bring myself to order Scotch so I had vodka deeming it appropriate in Moscow even in a Scottish restaurant.

Tuesday, today? We dressed with as many layers as we could fit against extended time in 30 F temperatures for extended walking in unsheltered park areas. We toured a Midtown Cemetery where,  Krushchev, Yeltsin,   Shostakovich,   Rostropovich, Mikoyan (that’s a history test) and many other luminaries,  political,  military and arts are buried.  We visited Victory Park (WW II) which seems to extend forever,  there is a fountain for every day of the war.  Finally we spent a long time in an art gallery dedicated to Russian art, Tretyakov Gallery, from the days of icons to just before the war.  After a tour ofthe Moscow subway, we returned to our hotel to thaw out. Later we got 6 of us together for dinner out at an “oriental” restaurant.  The menu ranged from Turkish to far Eastern and it was very enjoyable.  It would have been more so without the hookah pipes at nearby tables.

I have noted that we are a well oiled tour group.  We managed to stay together on the subway through rush hour and then find our way from the Metro stop to the hotel after Lara dropped us at the nearest stop.

In the morning we tour the Kremlin grounds.  It will be cold!  After lunch we return to the hotel to pack and prepare for a final farewell dinner.  We fly on the following morning to Shanghai to join a new group and begin again.

We boarded the bus in Tallinn in a chilly drizzle and it didn’t improve for 9 hours as we drove to St Petersburg.  Border crossing formalities in Narva were a bit nerve wracking more because the place looked like a scene out of a bad novel,  two 17th century fortresses facing each other across the river Narva and stone faced Russian boarder guards scrutinizing our documents not once,  not twice but three times.  Our initial impressions of Russia and St Petersburg were colored by the weather and exhaustion.

We awoke today to a forecast of mixed weather,  rain,  snow and sunshine.  During our two hour morning city tour we experienced all of that more then once,  we’ll it didn’t snow until later in the day.  Our guide,  Ivan, told us not to complain about the fact the sun was in the wrong place for our photo stops.  They only get 60 days with sun a year.  You can see great pictures of St Petersburg by using Google,  they will be far better than mine since Carol and I are shooting on the run and mostly into the sun.

After a group lunch we donned head sets so Ivan could talk to us in The Hermitage without shouting and disturbing everyone else,  this is required for groups of 6 or more.  Over 3 and a half hours we walked through every major room on the second floor (of 3) we had wonderful explanations of key pieces of art and building design.  Then we were turned loose with 30 minutes to run through the French Impressionists on the 3rd floor.  My back hurts,  my brain is overloaded and in an hour we will be attending a folk dance event.  We had hoped for Kirov Ballet,  but now I think folk dance will be easier to absorb,  especially as we saw a reasonable regional production of Swan Lake two nights ago in Tallinn. 

Brief impression of the Hermitage; it is hard to believe I had the chance to see with my own eyes, however briefly,  so many works of art that were like old friends from books and slides going back to when my parents collected books of prints and a certain highschool teacher made us learn to recognize them over 50 years ago. The buildings are immense, gaudy and grand. Every detail from the floor to the ceiling demands study.  As I waited for Carol outside the ladies room I noted the wall sconces were labeled Versace, couldn’t be, could it?  Again,  I took pictures,  so what.  What is online is far superior, search for Hermitage.

In the morning we continue the city tour and after lunch we go to Catherine’s Palace for more art and the Amber Room. After a fairwell dinner we will part company with our guide,  Baiba, and four of our crew. We continue on to Moscow as a well oiled travel crew of eight by air for 3 days.

Our first full day in Riga started with a chilly walk through Old Town and a tour of Art Nuvo architecture.  We visited the major towers in the Old Town after walking through The Park across the street from our hotel,  Europa Royale. Our God included the Independence Monument, erected to commemorate independence from Russia after WW I! We passed by the Opera House and crossed the Bridge of Locks where lovers and newly weds fasten padlocks engraved with their names before tossing the key in the canal (this sounds familiar).  The preserved and carefully restored Old Town is grand with a surplus of restaurants and churches.  After 3 hours we entered a warm lovely restaurant for an included lunch after such we met our bus for a drive to the Art Nuvo district and a tour of an apartment in one of the buildings such had been the home of one of the master architects of the area and is now a museum. 

We arranged with one partner to be dropped near the synagogue in Old Town and and after some serious navigating we found ourselves at the locked gate.  🙁
We returned the next day to find the price of entry was 2 Lat (about $4 each) and peering through the curtains we decided it wasn’t necessary to go any further.

Monday the 14th, started off far more grim. We stopped first are the site of the Great Choral Synagogue,  which is now an open Plaza with reconstructed broken walls and a commemorative plaque to the non Jewish heros who helped some survive.  On from there to Silispils Camp where 632 children died of hunger and cold and some 12,000 were slaughtered (according to Baiba that number is open to interpretation both higher and lower). After walking the Memorial grounds to the sound of a distant heart beat emanating from a black monument to the children we regrouped on the bus to stop at Rumpulus woods, the site of one of the first machine gun slaughters which over two non consecutive days took 24,000 lives in 1941, most from the Riga ghetto but also 1,000 Germen Jews brought in to be killed.

Finally we are done for the day with horror and following a happy stop (bathroom break) in a mall we were dropped off at the market which is housed in four Zeppelin hangars,  which will give some clue to the size of the market.  After our tour we had free time and we joined with John and Suzanne to buy food to make up our lunch and something “unusual” to present to the group tonight.  We found a dicon radish and salsa. We found a patch of stone pavement enclosed in a some wall behind a church to make our lunch stop sitting on the ground leaning on the wall in the sun.  As we walked towards the hotel we stopped in a coffee shop to conclude the meal and the experience.

After an interesting presentation and Q&A with a professor of political science from the University we got out the “unusual items” we had all chosen in the market and sampled and snacked on them.  Satisfied I went off to sauna. Afterwords I joined Carol in the bar and had a beer while she had salad and wine.  Today was a transit day and we left Riga for Tallinn. We stopped at yet another Castle in Cecis Latvia where we climbed the interior spiral stairs by the candlelight after bowling with wooden bowling balls on a not very smooth out door Lane.  The Radisson in Tallinn is very nice and modern.

From downer to upper and the emotional roller coaster continues. Our first day in Vilnius had us climbing to the highest point in the area to the last remaining defensive tower of the fortifications dating to the 14th century.  From there we could survey all of Vilnius.  We prepared ourselves for the strenuous climb with a highly recommended stop at the Chocolate shop for a chocolate drink.  This is not some diluted drink,  it is pure chocolate (except for the few who elected to dilute it with whole milk) served warm requiring a spoon to consume it.

At the end of the day we met the 6 people who were just joining us.  The next day, our tour included a stop at a museum built in the former KGB headquarters.  Richard, our guide for this tour, drove home the brutality that had happened in that place under the KGB and a relatively brief  stay by the SS during their occupation of this area of Lithuania.  After touring the cells we concluded in the very secret execution chamber with a horrifying video shot in the chamber. Richard was close to tears as he concluded his presentation about this horror and one of our party asked to be escorted out of the building. 

From there we walked to a cafe where the top aid to the prime minister for internal affairs came to address is about status of Lithuania with regard to economics and social issues.  The former was colored by Russia’s decision to declair Lithuania’s milk unfit for importation in the face of the Euro Markets continuing acceptance of it.  This is a ploy to attack the likely move of Ukraine into the Euro market. Go figure!

The next day we mixed together a vist to a reconstructed Lithuanian farm village with the story of a deportee under Soviet control before the Nazis seized control of the area.  This 84 year old women had been transported by cattlecar to Irkutsk over the period of a month and then 2000 kilometers North to a piece of land on the northern coast north of the artic circle to survive with the summer clothes on her back to drag logs out of the forest to the shore. Survive she did,  and a feisty lady Irena is.

I have skipped over much including lunch in a farm house in a remote village,  a trip the length of the Coronian Spit almost to the border of Russian territory,  hunting for and finding amber on the beach and learning how to recognize amber and how to work it. Also omitted is a long walk in Klaipaeda just to stretch the legs. 

Today was a long driving day with a stop at the “Hill of Crosses” it literally bristles with well over 200,000 crosses of all sizes.  There seems to be no good reason for this phenomenon other than it is a high point near a monastery,  however a special roadside stop had been built to make tourist visits easy.  One could buy crosses from finger size to 6 feet tall in the shop at the foot of the Hill.  Needless to say we didn’t. The last stop off the day was at the huge Rundale Palace which we are assured is just a taste of what’s to come in St Petersburg.