Trans-Siberian Tips

Katie and I met Jari and Nadezhda during our stay in Helsinki,. All of us used to live in Beijing, so we had a lot in common. We swapped many China stories, and I found out that they had taken the Trans-Siberian train from Vladivostok to Helsinki.

Katie and I are at the beginning of our own Trans-Siberian experience. Currently we are in St. Petersburg and plan to head east to Lake Baikal, then south to Mongolia. On this podcast, Jari and Nadezhda gave me some great tips on riding this famous train across Russia.

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Iceland on a Budget

Iceland was nearly a bust. Katie and I had a miserable first day, losing our shirts to the ridiculously pricey public transportation and spending the afternoon shivering and soaking wet from pouring rain. But then the sky cleared and we had an amazing two-day hike, from Skógar to Þórsmörk, between the fantastically-named Tindfjallajökull and Eyjafjallajökull volcanoes. The scenery was beautiful, the company friendly, the weather perfect. On our last day in the country, we returned to the airport, elated to have visited.

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Iron Wall, Silver Mountain

On this week's show, I talked with Paddy Robertson about our two-day bicycle trip from Beijing to the Iron Wall Silver Mountain, AKA the Silver Mountain Pagoda Forest. This is officially recognized by the national government as a AAAA scenic spot, and it was one of the 28 designated tourist destinations during the 2008 Olympics. It's a sacred site of Buddhism, originally built during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The current incarnation was built during the Liao Dynasty (907-1125).

Officially, the Silver Pagodas have been closed since 2014, but, as you'll hear during the show, Paddy and I found it easy to get into the park anyway.

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