А здес кто-нибуд наслаждается мидиим в Белгискыи ресторан. К сожелению, не здес в Алматы
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Прилетел в Казакхстан после Берлина. Алматы очен интересныи город. Окружен горами снежними. Очен красивыи - рекомендую.
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Докозание
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приветсвую новая читателница. я такои - не очен часто пишу что небуд здес - но постараюс по чаше по сколко интерес поевилос! И мои русскиы язык не стал лучше...

Блин. Приехал "домои" в москву и на екране в гост. номере написано "Welcome Mr Жones"

Гадыи.

Выходном праздновали наше 6-ои годовшина - как время летет...

А что изменилось...? я потолстел, жена помолодела...вот и все...

Только что читал, что мне надо ждать тепер до 67 лет что бы получить пенсии. Прекрасно. Ладно, до етого все изменяетсья в любом случае - отменяут пенсии и просто будут платить за похорона...

"Соньки - самые лучшие телефоны и даже в унитазах не тонут" (См. в низ - коментарии)

я еше негде не читал, что телефоны "Соньи" способныи к етому но готов верить. Но, я бы очень хотел знать кто открил ети новости в первом. И если ето было специальная раследования.

Жена тренировала сыну режать овошеи - вот он сидет с ножом и реально очень акуратно все делает. Молодец. Сам нервничил - вдруг отрежаныи маленкыи палец попоидет в салат... Он, кстати, сильно обрадовалься из-за того, что мы ему купили очен много шмоток "футболнии" (с гербом англииского команда) - Елки палки - делали от ребенка настояшыи англиискыи "чав" (Chav)
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Кстати, кнобка "транслит" отличная! Буду стараться так писать - и буду очен благодарен, если вы помогаете иногда изправить!

Всем извините, что не пишу на русском. Очен мне трудно - язык не роднои.

Буду практиковаться!

Byl tri dnya v Moldove. Sorry - et's do this in English - it looks better. Russian in latin letters looks so wierd - even if it is a good way to hide the fact you can't do the grammar and spelling properly!

I'm sitting in Budapest airport waiting for my flight back to Heathrow after a few days in Moldova - which was good.

Second visit to Chisinau - and nothing much had changed from the last time I was there two years ago! It's nice to have constants in life...

Chisinau, if you haven't visited, is a really nice little city. Not huge (official population about 500,000 I think they told me) and it's peaceful but fun. Warm weather, everything very cheap, nice, very atractive people and a really international feel - it feels like people got stranded there from all over the USSR when things fell to pieces so you meet Ukrainians, Russians, Central Asians, Romanians, Bulgarians and so on. The mix of blood seems to have a good effect on the population - they have more than their fair share of very good-looking people - and if the students I met are anything to go by, they are pretty intelligent as well. They also seem rather straighforward and uncomplicated people - and very frustrated in some ways at their isolation. They find it difficult to go anywhere especially Western Europe, the USA and so on.

I would not ike to call it a forgotten country - but none of my colleagues had any idea where on Earth I was going for this trip. I'm glad they don't know - the last thing this place needs is to be shaged senseless by idiotic English stag nights like the Czechs and Latvians have been (after all, it's cheap here - accommodation, drink, food and other "commodities" required by the soon-to-be-wed Englishman who intends for himself and his mates to be thoroughly unfaithful right from before the beginning of their solemn and sacred union!

I was lucky enough this time to get a look at the countryside (not just the bit of lan between the airport and the city). Moldova is incredibly fertile and most of it is farmland. The good chernozem for grain and vegetables and fruit and the sandier, hilly soil for grapes.

We visited a place called Orhueil Vechi (Old Orhueil) which is an interesting limestone outcrop cut round by a river. The cliffs have lots of natural caves which were enlarged and inhabitted by monks - a whole underground monastery which is now abandoned. The whole place is amazing. It's been inhabited for a long time - long before the monks there was a Dacian settlement on the hill (we're talking thousands of years ago). The river is flanked by limestone cliffs on one side and fertile-looking farmland on the other so it's a great place to live - water, high, easilly - defended position, and actually you come on it so suddenly from the rolling countryside surrounding it that it comes as a bit of a surprise - I though at first that it was a quarry!

The limestone is full of fosilised shells which I dutifully filled my pockets with (as my son was not available to do this). The whole place is alive. On the hill top silence reins except for the constant noise of the breeze, and sounds of children and cows from the valley below, but in the valley by the river the noise is cacophonous - Moldovan countryside is far from peaceful. First you have grasshoppers or cicadas or something shrilling away constantly. Then you have tiny little frogs who seem to have swallowed loudspeakers. Add to that birds (lots of them - goldfinches in flashing little flocks, wagtails, sparrows and even a pair of lazy old ravens flopping through the sky and croaking to each other - how they stay in the air at that speed I don't know). Noisier than downtown Chisinau!

There are enormous balck dung beetles crawling through the grass everywhere and brilliant green lizards with blue throats flitting through the grass and herbs.

Herbs - not my area of speciality but there are lots and they grow in abundance. My personal favourite was a large patch of hemp growing by the side of the road. My colleague explained that it grows like a weed all over Moldova and he and his mates used to make full use of this when he was a teenager. Perhaps that's why Moldovans are so laid back...

The farmed land seems to be divided up into shared pasture for people's cattle and the fields are also divied up into what amount to large vegetable patches where babushki and dedushki plant onions, beans and other stuff on their strip and surround it with grape vines.

The whole place appeals to my peasant blood but will no doubt leave my other friends utterly cold and slightly disgusted that I could possibly show so much interest in so much dirt...

I've uploaded some photos - I hope you like them...
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...and this is my wife - international explorer, linguist, medic, electronic diarist extraordinaire and also soon to be driver!

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Well, mildly eccentric anyway.

My son is 4.5 and in honesty he is the most incrdible person I have ever met. I am constantly bewildered by his inventiveness, imagination and wisdom...a real little sage in some ways. I love the way he thinks things through often to very bizarre but very logical conclusions. I am terrified by the way I begin to see more of myself in him every day - espeically in his emotional reactions...
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...and now I have to sit in Ferehegy airport and wait for 4 hours for my onward flight. I have only visited Budapest once before - spent a weekend here when I had a different job and loved it. The airport users here seem to consist of equal parts of dark-suited businessmen and gorgeous women. Perhaps I just don't notice anyone else any more...

The airport is quite nice - clean and in good shape. Had a great view of Budapest as I came in to land - so near and yet so far!!! Perhaps I should jack in the Chisinau thing and just spend the weekend in Budapest!

As if...the old sense of duty soon puts paid to those sorts of inklings.

Mind you, it does look warm, sunny and generally really nice outside - it's really very tempting! I have a Hungarian colleague at work - Agnes. I never quite worked out why she wanted to get away from here really but I suppose there are always people who want to escape and one man's meat is another man's poison...or perhaps "familiarity breeds contempt" works better in this instance. I grew up in such an idyllic place to many - it became the place to retire to for lots of better-off middle class folk who reached early-retirement age and needed something to spend their investment dividends on. But we were pretty blind to it - we knew we were supposed to think it was pretty and naturally stunning, but we didn't really notice it from day to day and the gushings of guests and tourists were always met with wry smiles...you can't eat a view etc... Not to say we didn't enjoy it - we used our surroundings all the time - day-long treks and playing in the woods near our home, discovering, adventuring, stirring up the poor old gamekeepers (who were certain we were all evil poachers - we wouldn't have had the guts or the desire to kill their precious pheasants).

The only thing travel really does, at least for me, is to bring you to a point where you really want to be at home somewhere. The true gypsy, I think, perhaps doesn't have this need. The constant travel like me is always thinking about what it might be like to settle down in one of the places he or she visits. Or maybe it really is just me. After all, I went to Russia initially to see what the place was like and ended up staying for three years, marrying into the place and then going back there on a regular basis ever since.

If I stayed at home for any length, I'd be happy enough with my wonderful wife and child, home, garden and all the rest of it, but I would always have that feeling at the back of my mind...what is it like elsewhere, I want to see. Perhaps I'm just a nosey bastard and like to pry into other people's cultures!

My younger brother is different in some ways - or maybe he's just the same. He does everything for himself - I'd love to do this but I am constantly worried about what othere people think about my actions. Perhaps I'm givng too much away here. Better to upload a load of pretty photos and not get too self-analytical. After all, who gives a monkey's toss anyway!

Sitting at Heathrow Terminal 2 waiting for a flight to Budapest (then to Chisinau in Moldova) - just a weekend away but with indirect flights it takes nearly as long to get anywhere as it does flying out east!

Since Vietnam I was in Hong Kong and Macau - HK was it's usual self - it's wierd energy bears you up. I arrived feeling exhausted and pissed off and by the end of the first day I was on a rush - wierd place!

Macau is also an eye-opener. Only 1.25 hrs by fast ferry from Hong Kong, but an ex-Portuguese colony, not British as HK was. Feel the difference! It isn't all built up and there are still lots of lovely old Portuguese colonial buildings. The biggest building in town is a massive casino - Macau is the only place in China where gambling is legal and they are planning to turn it into China's Las Vegas - good way to spoil it if ever there was.

Macau Chinese are really...well, Portuguese...? They chatter incessantly, are wonderfully friendly and are just so different to the HK bunch (who I also love dearly - but they are different!).

It's worth going to Macau for a day if you're in Hong Kong - there's a lot to see...in a day. And they do great dim sum in the restaurant at the base of the TV tower. Then you can climb to the top and bungee jump off - the longest permanent bungee jump in the world apparently. Perhaps best to do this before you have your dim sum...

Photos later...no time!

Just about to leave Ho Chi Minh City for Hong Kong (land of air conditioning and modern conveniences) which is really not exciting me like this place does. Went to the War Remnants Museum today - sort of wish I hadn't, but really had to go - it was horrible, shocking and impressive - the things people can do to each other never fails to depress me utterly. Especially the so-called civilised ones. Blin. Will do pics later - the internet here in the hotel lobby is low speed and I have a taxi to find!

Tam biet Viet Nam!

Didn't get all my pictures uploaded earlier so here are some more - although I may give up pretty quickly cause I'm on dialup in the hotel and it is some ridiculously tiny speed so will take about three hours to upload each pic!

Great place though really - the people are also actually really quite nice looking - well, a lot of the girls are anyway - or maybe I've been away too long and am getting desperate...
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I've been asked to write in English because apparently my Russian with latin letter is really awful! So here goes...

Now I'm in Vietnam - have been here for about 4 days. It's an amazing place - I'm full of new impressions and have found everything to be totally unique. I have a business partner in Moscow who used to work here in te 1970s as a journalist and he always seemed so fired up about the place - I can understand why now!

My first few days were spent in Ha Noi in the north - the capital. Ha Noi is a smaller city than Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south but is really pleasant. Of course, it's hot hot hot! Very humid and temperatures over 35 degrees celsius so out doors you sweat constantly - not so good if you're in a business suit but OK if you are in the standard cotton shirt and slacks.

I had some free time on Sunday to look around with my colleague John from the USA. He's been once before so had a better idea of where to go. The streets are busy all day long with thousands of people on motorcycles - it's the main means of transport and there are so many of them it's unbelievable - seems to me people must just ride around (I asked my colleague Thuong and she said mostly that's exactly what they do as often it is the only way to cool down!) You see whole families on one motorcycle which is hilarious - mum, dad and baby all zooming along. They also manage to strap incredible amounts of stuff to the back of these scooters - I saw one guy carrying an enormous 1.5 m tall vase on the bac of his motorcycle!

I have taken some pictures - some of the Temple of Literature (the first university to be opened in Vietnam - it's older than Oxford University in the UK). The ancient scholars are worshipped like Buddhas - the layout of the temple is almost exactly like the Lama temple I wrote about in Beijing.

There are also some other pictures - of the One-Pillar Pagoda (a little teple in the centre of the city) and of Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum (which is massive in comparison to poor Vladivmir Ilyich's). Plus a few others as well. Let me know if you have any questions about them!

Will write more about Saigon when I have seen more!
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Na konets doma. Letel iz Shenzhena v Shanghai - ochen krasiviy gorod - chto to v nem ne Kitaiskiy - bole evropeiskiy variant...khotya neboskrebi sto protsentno vostochniy - oni soveremeniy i otlichno vygladyat, ne stariy kak v New Yorke.

Ya ne uspel mnogo fotografirovat goroda no vot v niz to chto est. Oni, konechno, ne ochen khrosho poluchilis - oni iz moego mobilnii trubki. Nu ladno, chto delat?
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