Eastern Europe

Well here is finally some blog.

We left Volgograd in Russia and went towards to Ukrainian border in the south by the black sea. On the way the police had to stop my and say goodbye by fine for $100 for driving on 101 km/h in a 90 zone. So stupid but nothing you can say about it. Our last night in Russia we got invited to a party that few guys were throwing for one of their brother that was wisting them from Moscow. It is so funny in Russia that people don't talk or don't even try to talk to us normally, but after few drinks they get so interested about those strange foreigners. And they treat us like kings, buy heaps of drinks and food, and we have to drink and eat it all.

Ukraine is so similar to western Russia, we talked about the only difference we did see was the large number of really beautiful ladies we experienced in Russia did not exist in Ukraine in so great quantities. We had decided we wanted to sleep by the black sea. After quite a bit of search and directions from locals we found the perfect camping spot just by the sea. But this spot did not turn out to be as perfect as it looked. In the evening we got eaten by the flyes and in the morning we woke up really early because it was so hot and the tent was full of small ants. They had got in the tent in the motorcycle gear we had left on the ground while pitching the tent. Next day I my rear tire lost air just before the Moldovan border. I had driven through the tire and the tube. This was the tire we had put under in Mongolia but we had our old tires from SE Asia for spares. Ukraine was also really hot, definitely the hottest country we traveled in Europe. We also drove through the most polluted city we have been through there, half of the city was just large factories producing clouds of smoke.

We arrived into Moldova quite late and decided to head to the capital which is 80 km from the border. The border crossing went good. We just had to pay the immigration officer some beer money to fill out the forms for us as they were all in Moldovan! We left the border and after maybe 10 km we got to a bridge that was guarded by soldiers with machine guns, and they also had some military vechles on the bridge so it was just one way bridge now. But after the bridge we came to the first road intersection. On the other side of that intersection the police and the army had some buildings by the roads. First a police officer stopped us and wanted to see the drivers license, he then pointed us to go to some other officer. He was a passport inspector and finally he pointed us to go into a building and that guy wanted to inspect the registration papers for the motorcycles. We got out of this without paying but a little further down the road another police check point. We got stopd and a "nice" officer pointed us to come in with him with our papers. He checked our passports and then pointed to a amount we had to pay. We ended paying him and when leaving he said we would need to go across the road to get our drivers licence registered. That guy took my license hammered some random stuff into the computer and then asked for 10 Euros. We payed him half of that and did off course not get anything back. As we finally got to the city the police stopped us one more time there. But they gave up on us very quick as we always started to talk about something else instead of continue searching for our driver licence. After checking into the most soviet hotel we visited in our trip we got inspected by the for the final time after dinner when walking home. As you need to carry your passport all the time in Moldavia we both had our passports this time. First the took Viggos passport he took Vissos passport and started writing info in some paper he found in the car while he was once in a while asking, beer money for police, beer money for police. Viggo just no beer money tonight. Then he took my pass and did the same exept this time the standard was higher. He asked for Cognac money for the police Cognac money. They are so pathetic, go lower than hungry people in many places. But apart from this Moldavian people were really nice and the country was more beautiful than Russia and Ukraine.

Getting into the EU in Romania was nice and easy. This beautiful country recently got into the EU and the first thing they seem to have changed there is every second person is wearing high visibility west now. It is a bit odd seeing old farmer with hat on his horse wagon in high visibility west. The EU also seem the have shipped large loads of asphalt as most of the roads had new. They were also starting construction on some large highways. But it was nice to see the horse is still so much used in Romania. We drove a really nice route trough the northern part of the country. This is definitely a country we can see us wisting again.

Now we are in Sönderborg in Denmark at Sighvaturs Viggo cousins place. We are going up to Hanstholm to take Norrænu in the morning. We will sail to Faeroe Islands and arrive in Iceland on Thursday 9 AM. But we know it is going to be some struggle to get the bikes through customs because they do not meet the EU requirements. But those bikes have been imported from the US so I'm sure it will be OK. We have therefore decided to drive to Reykjavik on Friday, not Thursday.

Now we are finally world famous back home as we came in the newspaper, see it here and here.

Well it will be nice to be home soon,

Take care,Ingo

Iceland here we come

We have booked a ticket in Norraenu and we will arrive to Seydisfjordur 23 of July.

Now we are heading to France to visit some of my family who is there. We plan to drive through Ukraine, Moldova?, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and France. Then we will drive north through Germany to Denmark and take the ferry from there.

Ingo

10 days - 5 time zones

Hi folks,

We are now finishing our only stop here in Russia and are heading into Ukraine today. We have driven over 6000 km in ten days and are now close to the border in Volgograd. The drive was often quite tireing and boring, expacially in siberia. The roads have mainly be fine exept few gravel section in siberia, but we were lucky there as it rained before so there was not much dust from the trucks. The police stopped us few times for speeding and crossing a solid line when overtaking. But we have gotten away most time without paying except twice where we had to let some dollars fall on the floor or the desk. Viggo got arrested here on Saturday night for not having his passport on him and had to sleep that night in Russian cell. How funny is that. They also checked me but luckely I had mine on me. Sadly our computer is broken so we have not been able to upload more photos. But we will hopefully get it fixed in Europe.

Russia is beautiful country, expecially it was nice after crossing the Urals. The people are nice as well but they dont speek english which make everything so hard. Just the simple thing of order food and get accomidation can be mission on its own.

Take care,
Ingo

Russia

Hi folks,

Short update. We we drove yesterday to Irkutsk in Russia. I collected my driverslicenase here today so we are all ready to drive through Russia in 13 days. I belive it is around 8000 km. Our Russian visa expires on the 8 of July.

We have put in some of the photos from Mongolia, check them out. Mongolia was great country. Deffenetly the high light of the trip.

Well have to go, lots to drive today. First to the Baikal lake and have a look at this deepest and largest water in the world. 20% of all fresh water on the earth is there!!!

More will come soon,

Ingo

Mongolia

Hi hi,

Yesterday we finally got our bikes here in Mongolia after shipping them from Thailand. Today we are going on a 1-2 week trip around Mongolia, starting by heading south to the Gobi desert. We have had problems getting Russian visa here in Asia so we did send our passports back home to Iceland. They are now in the Russian embassy there and should be back here in 10 days or so! We went on a 5 day organized tour witch was awesome. Stayed in gers every night, three of them with nomadic families. We have uploaded a lot of really great photos in the album, here.

Take care,
Ingo

Shanghai and Beijing 18-23 May

We arrived in Shanghai early morning and with no sleep from last night. We started finding guest house and then we went straight to the Russian Consular in hope to get visa. We got there and the first thing they office lady did was looking at our Chinese visa and say sorry. You need to have Chinese residency to get Russian visa here. We

 did not give up and talked to the guy over the visa section for some time and the best he could offer us was 10 day transit visa. He also said the only hope he could see for us would be getting help from the Icelandic embassy to make a “deal with the Russian embassy in Beijing. Angry and pissed off we went back to the hostel and called the Icelandic embassy in Beijing. The told us the only thing they could offer us was writing a letter to the Russian embassy asking them to process our application quick and positive. They also said this was normally enough to get the visa. Happy with that news we took a nap and decided to leave Shanghai ASAP and go to Beijing. We went to see the Oriental Perl tower that night.

 It is so high and beautiful. It is apparently the third highest tower in the world. Next day we had fight in the afternoon so we went to the Ocean Aquarium and Science and Technology Museum before we went to the airport. 

Landed with another Chinese airline in Beijing, they are just fine to fly with by the way. We went to a hostel I stayed at last time when I was here last year. The day after we went to see a travel agency, just to see if they had any advice or could help us get the Russian visa. They told us the embassy in Hong Kong was the only in China that did process foreigner. But they thought we would have a good chance with the letter we had. Next day we took the application and the letter we collected from the Icelandic embassy and took it to the Russians. They told us to call them in the afternoon. We spend most of the day waiting and calling them as we always had to call later and then finally 5 PM they told us to come next day at 11 AM. They would then be finished “thinking” about this. Early next morning I got email from the Icelandic embassy that they would deny our request. We went to the embassy at 11 and they said sorry we can not give you visa as the Icelandic embassy in Beijing has the same rules for Russians in China who wants to get Icelandic visa. We went straight to buy a train ticket to Mongolia as we knew there are only two trains a week and the next one was leaving the next day. We got the tickets and went to explore Beijing attractions, such as the Summer Palace and Tiananmen Square. 

It is funny that we were not able to access this blogsite in China, they seem to have it blocked there!

Now we have been in Mongolia for three days and really like it. Today the temperature was close to 0 deg and it has been snowing a bit. Last two days we could were shorts and I belief the temperature then was over 25 deg. So crazy!!! We are leaving on a 5 day tour tomorrow where we will ride camels and horses. Stay few nights with nomadic families in there gers. Go to national parks and se the only wild horses in the world and the final day we will spend with eagle hunters. They use eagles to hunt animals, everything up to wolf I was told. The car used is UAZ (rússajeppi).

We have put in new photos from the last days in Thailand and China here. And from the train journey to Mongolia here. 

Take care,

Ingó

Thailand second time, 8-17 May

Chiang Mai

We left the border town by the Mekong early and set of to Chiang Mai. It was 300 km drive but we wanted to try to talk to some cargo companies that day because it was 

Friday. When we got there we went straight to the airport were Thai cargo is. They told us it was a public holyday today and on Monday so they could not help us until then. Great, its always public holiday in Thailand when we are there. We called all the cargo companies and on of 

them said he could help us but he would not be able to meet us until Sunday. He was Mr. Boonsak. We found a nice guest house with a swimming pool, as we decided we really need that since we were back in hot hot Thailand. Went out to try to find place were we could get new tires, chains and sprockets for Mongolia. We did not have luck that day but we found later MX shop and they ordered tires for us from Bangkok. They could not get sprockets but could get them maid easily. We didn’t want to do that so we are just going to see how long the original set will last. 

Next day we just did some shopping, I got new sandals and wallet. On Sunday we Boonsak came to our guest house. He was going to give us prices to Seoul in S-Korea and Ulan Bator in Mongolia. He measured the bikes and was going to call us back tomorrow. 

On Monday Boonsak gave us prices and we decided to ship them straight to Mongolia. It was quite more expensive than to Seoul but if we got there we need to take ferry to Vladivostok in Russia as well as we would most likely need to transfer the bikes in Korea by land and I have read just that costs 700 USD. We drove the bikes to his warehouse and he gave us scooter to have that we took back. 

On Tuesday we went back to his warehouse to take the bikes apart so the shipping would be cheaper. We took the front tire, front fender, handle bars as well as the rear fender off the bikes. Boonsak drove me as well to pick up the new tires. We changed the front tires but we will probably ride on the old back tire as far as we can. The new tires are quite knobby so not going to be nice on tarmac. 

On Wednesday his workforce created the bikes. They packed them into wooden creates made on the spot with just hand tools. We went to check out there work just before lunch and were not totally happy as they were too big. When sending freight by air the price is calculated for volume and weight and the higher price is used. When packing bikes it should “easily” be packed so it is charged by weight. After insisting to make creates 20 cm narrower, our bikes will be now charged by weight not volume. So there is no point to make them smaller than that. 

Went to a blues bar that night and listened to good live performance of some Thai bands.  Me with the guitar player, called Slash. Realy cool guy that with a awesome hair ;-)

Next two days we were just hanging in Chiang Mai waiting for our Passports to come back from Bangkok. Boonsak had to send them to Bangkok to custom clear the bikes and it took few days. Also we have been going to the ATM every day in the last couple of days to collect money for the transportation. 

On Saturday Boonsak called us in the morning to tell us the Passports had arrived. So we booked train to Bangkok leaving that night and flight to Shanghai from there. Boonsak drove us to the bank to get the rest of the money. We were having problems as we the cards have limited amount to take out each day. After a struggle it got sorted and we could finish the payment. In the afternoon he took us to the train station and we had dinner with him there. He bought beer and water for us to have on the train. This was night train we took left at 17:00 and arrived in Bangkok 08:00 the next morning. There were reasonably nice beds in the train that were turned into seats at the start and the end of the journey.  

On Sunday we arrived in Bangkok at eight in the morning and went too a very large mall. The mall had 500 stores and 90 restaurants on 7 floors. We printed out documents for the Russian visa as well as some other things. Went to a movie and walked a lot around this mall. Decided there was no point leaving it as the temperature outside was too high and so nice in the mall. Then we went to the airport early to wait more. When the Chinese Airline finally decided to open the check in and we went there they had problems because when we checked into China at the Laos border, they marked on the visa with pen and the airport staff they believed we had already used our visa. So they had to get confirmation from Chinese immigration and we had to wait for over and hour for them to get that. But we got that and were all fine. Next stop Shanghai-China.