The Trip

Today marks the last week of being Down Under, next Saturday the trip will start from Sydney's Kingsford-Smith Airport. I just give a short recap of the route I plan to travel:

1. Malaysia & Singapore: 1 April I'll arrive in Kuala Lumur, Malaysia's capital. I'll stay two days in the city and visit the Petronas Towers, hope to go to see some caves and do some shopping of course. On the 3rd I'll take a bus to Melakka, which is known to have some old Dutch colonial architecture ("Stadhuys"), one day later I am going further south to Singapore where I spend two days, want to do some cultural things and shop! My last 4-5 days I'll spend on a tropical island off the east coast of the Malaysian peninsula. Finally 11 April I'll go back to Kuala Lumpur and head off for the next destination:



2. Hong Kong: I will visit one of my ex-housemates who moved there last week. Looking around the city, maybe visiting Disneyland Hong Kong and shopping (again ;-) ) From there the plan is to set off to the next destination:




3. China: My housemate might accompany me to one of the southern provinces where there is lots of natural beauty to see, from there I most likely travel on to Xian, which is and old capital city and is close to the famous terracotta warriors. If there is time left I might go to Shanghai, otherwise I'll be in Beijing 20 April where I'll meet Xander and Francois the day after. We'll spend 3 days in Beijing before we kick of the big one: the Trans-Mongolian Express (TME)




4. Mongolia: our first stopover on the TME will be Mongolia's capital of Ulan-Bator, we'll spend a week in the country and take a tour that should show us all major sites and sceneries.



5. Russia: next stop Irkutsk on lake Baikal in the middle of Siberia. We'll spend there three days and hopefully get a glimpse of Siberia and the lake (the largest fresh water resevoir in the world). When we board the train again and head off to Yekaterinaburg (3-4 days in the train!), this city has lots of history (The last Czar, Nicholas II and his family were killed here by the Bolcheviks) and is very symbolic for me: 40 KM to the west we will cross the border between Asia and Europe so I'll step into the old continent myself. The next destination will be Moscow, where we look around 3 days, after which we will go to St Petersburg for 4 days. From here I'll take off for the last leg
   
   
6. Home: all good things come to an end. I'll be landing on Schiphol Airport on the 18th of May. After 20 months I will be back where it all started!