This is a very special place. There is very little to do other than sit in relaxed cafes and bars, read books, be inspired, have a massage, do some Tai Chi  or maybe go for a trek in the hills. It is great. We’ve already stayed here twice the amount of time we planned to (lets hope the guy we left our big bags with in Bangkok hasn’t sold all our stuff!).

We’re staying over the river from the main part of town, it’s very peaceful. We have only the noise of the geckos,birds and the occasional downpour of early monsoon rain on the roof of our little bamboo hut to listen to.

Bridge to our hut

We’ve discovered a few things while we’ve been here, the first of these discoveries is that we both have an amazing ability to sit in a cafe for over 5 hours without really realising an hour has passed. Something strange has happened to time. Or perhaps it’s just that our cafe of choice has an atmosphere and menu that appears to lead to a meditative state that removes you from the usual worries of time and the urge to “do” things.

The cafe, aptly named “Good Life”, specialises in tea, the must have over 50 different types on their menu, many of which have been used as remedies for various ailments in traditional medicine. Today we sampled the ‘Jiaogulan’- tea of immortality!

From their leaflet,

“Jiagulan has grown wild for millenia in the Guizho province of Southern China. Here the people were mot much unlike any others. They woke up with the sun fed the animals and tended the fields… In 1972 after completing the first ever nationwide census … the Chinese government found that the Guizho province had a remarkable number of people who lived to be well over one hundred years old “

“Researchers were sent from Beijing university to investigate. They considered diet, lifestyle, genetics and nearly every possible factor, their conclusion? Jiaogulan”

Personally I’m not quite sure how to feel about these kind of  “healing” teas, I’m definitely interested though and along with sampling more teas I shall be doing a bit of research . Either way for now at least I know it tastes good and I reckon with this tea and my trip up Tai Shan I’m set up. Ooo,I’ll get a letter from the Queen, or rather Prince Charles, or whoever. How very exciting!

Two other very interesting things have been tried in this place, Kombucha and Wheatgrass. Now these two I am convinced of.

Kombuca

Kombucha is a tea that has been fermented by a kind of mushroom which is a culture of yeast and acetobacter. What this really means is it turns the tea into a very slightly alcoholic drink which tastes, in my opinion, a bit like cider.

Good Life sells loads of this stuff,  and I’m not surprised, I’m completely hooked – it’s amazing. It’s subtle, but it produces a kind of mild euphoria and keeps you alert in a happy kind of a way. We’ve been having it just after breakfast. What a way to start the day!

Here’s a few photos of the culture they have. They have loads! Jars and jars all growing in the back of the restaurant. Amazing stuff.

bottling the kombucha

Again, there’s all kind of health claims, from Seeds of Health,

“There is a lot of experiential evidence from people who have been using kombucha over many years. Many of the benefits reported include improvements in energy levels, metabolic disorders, allergies, cancer, digestive problems, candidiasis, hypertension, HIV, chronic fatigue and arthritis. It ‘s also used externally for skin problems and as a hair wash among other things.”

As with a lot of these kind of natural health products, the kind of  “proper” scientific research seems to be somewhat lacking, but from the experience  of it  I’ve had I’m definitely willing to give it a go and look forward to starting my own culture as soon as possible. I like it too that it’s one of these things you kind of pass on, like a gift. Once you have some of the culture, it keeps growing, you can have enough for yourself and pass it on to other people. I would love to hear from anyone in the UK who makes it!

Wheatgrass

Wheatgrass shot

This is another new one on me courtesy of Good Life. Wheatgrass. This too seems to have an incredible energising effect. Down in one, a shot sized glass in the morning is enough for me, but some people are hooked on this stuff, I’ve heard people saying they’d have up to 8 a day!

The health claims, mostly based on the high chlorophyll and vitamin content  include a wide range of benefits including increasing hemoglobin production, detoxifying, helping skin problems such as eczema and psoriasis, keeping hair from greying (!), prevention and cure of colon and other cancers and boosting energy. Bodykind has a good “is it all just hype” article which details some scientific evidence supporting the benefits of drinking wheatgrass.

Again, it’s hard to know, all I can tell you is that after a tour of Pai’s bars finishing at four followed by only 3 hours sleep I had a shot of this with my breakfast and was certainly more perky than I was before and have made it through the day with much more energy than I usually would after such a night. I do not however know if my hemoglobin production has increased!

Wheatgrass can be grown easily at home in trays, there’s lots of information and instructions here. If/when I start my own I’ll let you know how it goes! Would be great to hear from any other fans or growers too!

Finally, here’s a few photos from the lovely trek we did while we weren’t getting high on grass. We had an amazing time and were very lucky to have the company of two lovely Dutch girls Juul and Eliza. Lots of good chats plus perhaps more than a few beers to celebrate their last night in Pai, sob:-( Celebrate is not quite the right word, sad to see them go, we had a good time together. Keep in touch you two!

After nearly a month in Hoi An sadly the amazing contract on our flat stating that we should resolve any conflicts with the “spirit of comradeship” had come to an end and it was time to move on. We packed up our bags, said our goodbyes, hopped on a train and waved farewell to this friendly place that had been our home for the last few weeks.

Spending a little more time there allowed us to get to know people just that bit better. The lady down the road who did our laundry, the smiley lady and her daughter on the market who made our breakfast fruit shakes and all the other people from places we frequently cycled past who always had a smile and a wave for us, we’ll miss them all.

But most of all we will miss the people from Karma Waters who were so good to us while we were there. It really was a treat to meet them and to spend so much time chatting, sharing stories and ideas.

Karma Waters

We did so much during our time there. Kayaking, cooking lessons, speed boat trips and an exciting, though unsuccessful trip out on a life boat across the sea to an island. Six foot waves and a tilting boat. Andy and I were soaked head to foot. I was enjoying the ride, popped on a life jacket, clung on to the rails. Woohooo! I only became worried when the people driving the boat said it was too rough, we had to head back. I can’t really describe how amazing it all was.

But amongst the many things we did while we were there the highlights for me must have been Uma’s birthday and the boat race.

Leanne and Uma

Uma is Paul and Duyan’s beautiful daughter and it was her 1st birthday. The 1st birthday is a big deal in Vietnam. Families place a real importance on this day and throw a party to celebrate. Andy and I were really honoured to be invited to this special day.

The head of the district came over to say some prayers and perform a special ceremony. He was a very friendly chap with an Ian Brown haircut and a flat cap, you could tell he was a bit of a dude. Although our lack of Vietnamese meant we couldn’t really speak to him we just got a really good vibe from him. The night we left he came chasing after us to shake our hands and say goodbye.

1st birthday ceremony

With our limited knowledge of Buddhist traditions a lot of what went on went completely over our heads, but it was all very interesting to watch.

The table offerings

Later Uma was sat on the floor with a tray of objects including a model tree, a pen, sweets, paper, a doll, a comb and other various bit and bobs. The belief is that whatever she chooses from the tray will say something about her future. People laughed and shook their heads as she went straight for an enormous lump of sugar, a jelly cup sweet and another wrapped sweet.

Predicting Uma's future

We enjoyed a lovely meal with family and friends and that evening yet more food including a never ending bowl of soup. There must be some invisible marker on the bowl below which if you continue eating you get refilled. Now I was brought up to finish what I had in front of me. You can imagine the cycle of soup this conflict of cultures created. Me politely trying to finish what I was given and he trying to be the good host and make sure I was well fed. Despite repeated attempts to say I really was full the soup kept coming. Andy and I both got caught in the same trap and must have had 10 serving each.

Uma Soup

They followed a similar rule with the beer.The neighbours had come round including an elderly Vietnamese man who seemed set to drink us under the table if we hadn’t have been saved by the lady from next door who insisted we stopped. Each time he took a drink we all cheered and had to do the same. But not only that, if I didn’t drink enough he’d shout at me to drink more. At one point I had to down nearly half my drink!

The next day with beery heads we all set out to watch a boat race to commemorate 50 years since Ho Chi Minh went to Cham Island. This was an incredible thing to see! Despite the fact that it was raining quite heavily and the boat race was taking place at 9am on a normal working day the entire town seemed to have decided not to bother going to work and had turned out to watch. Thousands of people lined the banks of the river, some sitting on the edge, some clinging from coconut trees, others, like us, lined up along the water edge in boats of all shapes and sizes.

Big boat with Uncle Ho

People went crazy shouting and screaming for their own local team. It all seemed very competitive. It was like the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race gone mad. A chaotic crowd of red flag flying locals edged out into the river throwing water at rival village’s boats. It all got a bit hairy at one point and a few empty bottles and melon rinds were also spotted flying through the air. Brilliant.

Hoi An boat race

After all this it was really sad to leave. I really hope one day to visit again. Many thanks to Paul, Duyen and all the staff for all the amazing times we had and everything you taught us.

If you want something a bit more than sight seeing and sunbathing from a trip then Karma Waters is definitely the place to be. The home page of the website opens with the statement, “At some point we understood and accepted that life is Karma and this is our place”, from there follows an explanation of their “Busi-ness” (that activity that keeps you busy) model of Karma Investment,

“Karma Investment is to consciously invest in improving your own life and that of all others (people, environment, animals, etc.) by consciously making the focus of all “investments” (time, energy, knowledge, etc.) to improve personal & collective karma”

Regular readers may recall we came here on one of our first days and ended up in a conversation with the owner, Paul, which somehow convinced us Hoi An should be our home for the month. We’ve since been back many times and enjoyed inspirational conversations covering, as you can probably imagine, life, the universe and everything.

Aside from the spiritual guidance we received here, another draw, if you need one, is that this place has perhaps one of the best views of any Hoi An cafe – a quiet spot looking out across a beautiful tropical river. The food is very tasty too, it comes in generous portions and is intentionally healthy with no MSG and all fresh ingredients.

We had a lovely night there on Friday when we enjoyed sharing an enormous Chinese style Hotpot with Paul, his wife Duyen, their kids and some of the people who work there. I fear we may be a bad influence on him though in encouraging him to stay up late chatting when he had to be up early. We seem to have this effect on people. But you know, if the time is right, you’ve just got to go with it.

Duyen is responsible for the creation of most of the meals on their menu and kindly agreed to some unofficial cooking lessons, so over the last few days I’ve been taught how to make one of their soups, a spicy salad and a vegan pancake roll. Amazing. Here is the first of those recipes, Curried Vegetable Noodle Soup. Thanks again for sharing it with me! There are more videos on the Karma Waters website showing how to create other dishes from their menu.

Curried Vegetable Soup with Noodles

Recipe for 1 LARGE bowl, enough for 2 people.

• 1 carrot peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 medium sized potato peeled and cut into chunks
• 2″ of taro root peeled and cut into chunks
• 1/8 of an onion finely chopped
• 3 mushrooms (they used something similar to jelly ear) chopped small
• 3 or 4 pieces of crispy tofu sliced
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• glass noodles (not sure on measurement, say about a 1.5cm diameter bundle?!)
• 2 tbsp peas
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• Veggie fish sauce (or soy sauce)

1. Put the carrot, potato and taro root into a pan with just enough boiling water to cover and simmer until tender then drain (keep the cooking liquid).
2. Place the glass noodles in a bowl of cold water to be used later.
3. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan, add the garlic and onion, cook for one minute, then add the curry powder, cook for a further minute before adding in this order and stirring between each new addition the drained veg, tofu, peas, and mushrooms.
4. Add a good splash of veg. fish sauce (or soy sauce) and then add the reserved cooking liquid from the vegetables.
5. Cover and heat for a couple of minutes, add salt, pepper and a tsp of paprika, heat for 2 minutes more then remove the glass noodles from their water and add them to the pan. The soup is ready when the noodles are cooked.

Also there are pics from the ice festival, which wasn’t quite what we expected. It seems from this year it has been taken over by Disney. You can imagine our joy when we were greeted by a huge Mickey Mouse, lots of merchandise and general selling out of a previously independent event. Booo. Still, we had a good time. Well actually it got 3.5 out of 10, but you know we had as good a time as we could at -23 surrounded by plastic Disney characters when we were expecting world famous ice sculptures.

I have to start the post off with this though:

It is the breakfast from the hotel we were staying at, The Lungmen, which was just opposite the station. Have you ever seen anything like it?! There was a huge choice of dishes, from grain based porridge type soups, steamed bread, different steamed vegetables, sweet potatoes, black eggs, white eggs, fried eggs, stuffed buns and loads more. It was brilliant! We had no idea really what we should be eating with what, or how, so we just had to go for it. I have to point out though that these plates and bowls are very small! We didn’t really have like the equivalent of 8 full sized plates of food just for breakfast! Honest.

So, to the photos… **Click to enlarge + for more info**

Our last stop in Russia was a couple of days in Irkutsk, including a day trip to Listvianka on Lake Baikal. The lake was amazingly beautiful. It is the largest fresh water lake in the world at around 400 miles in length, so looking across the lake was more like looking out to sea, except for that it was frozen! Actually it wasn’t completely frozen, in a few months it will be frozen enough for people to drive all the way across, but right now it is just frozen around the edges. Still enough for us to stand on, which we did!

One day there was a bit of wind which was causing part of the lake to freeze and shift across as we watched it. The sound was incredible! Never seen anything like it in my life. The ice that was coming across was only a couple of mm thick, but you could imagine the power that anything thicker could have, it was unstoppable. As soon as one bit hit the edge the power from behind would force it up and shatter it into tiny pieces which then would form the frozen edge. And I’d always watched these nature progams thinking,”but how would ice move huge rocks?!” Now I know.

One day we were there some important religious type person arrived. Crowds of people were on the street. He blessed the lake, then with a branch splashed water on everyone, then people collected water from the lake and then, crazy people, some of them got in! It was -15! I can’t imagine how the water must have felt. Brrrr.

While we were at the lake we went dog sledging, which was fantastic. Weaving around a forest, being pulled along by 10 very giddy dogs on a sledge, dodging trees and clinging on as we bounced over bumps was great fun. Seemed like the dogs loved it too. If only it snowed all the time at home we could all scoot around on sledges, woopeeeee!

Also at the lake there are places which have these amazing Banyas. which are the Russian Saunas. Actually the one we went to was more like a sauna house. As well as the typical sauna room first there is a small room for you to hit each other with branches in, then a separate room with a small pool of cold water to plunge into, which I think was coming straight from the lake and then also there was like a lounge attached where you could order food and beers to be delivered. Wow. As it was off season we had this whole place to ourselves! If there are a few of you can hire the whole thing out for a few hours which I imagine would be brilliant fun!

We left Russia via a 2 day train journey to Harbin, our penultimate stop on the trans-siberian, and for both of us our first visit to China. The train station door opened up onto a very busy square. There was hundreds of people rushing around. Everyone seemed to be in quite chirpy moods too. Lots of smiles around. As we stepped out of the station into the squre the first thing we saw was an enormous colourful tree, about 20 meters tall and looking like something from a computer game it really wasn’t what I was expecting to see! Stood next to it was a huge ice sculpture all lit up different colours.

We could see our hotel from the station, however between us and it there was a huge road, about 4 separate sections of 2 or 3 lanes each. As far as we could see there didn’t appear to be any subways so we joined the Harbinians and dashed across the road with all our bags, jumping out of the way of cars which seemed to come from every direction and leaping over the barriers in between each lane of traffic. This whole situation was made all the more ridiculous by the fact that despite it being a very cold place (-23 when we were there, but often colder), meaning that for at least 4 months of the year the whole place would be covered in snow and freeze up, all the road and pavement surfaces were made out of the most slippery surfaces I’ve ever know. In some places there were even patterned sections of polished marble, to make things even more fun! People seemed to be sliding around everywhere clinging on to each other and giggling.

Harbin was sooo cold. We found it quite difficult to stay outside for more than about 30 minutes at a time. We both had every item of thermal underwear on we owned, scarves wrapped round our faces, two pairs of gloves and many pairs of socks on and despite this it was still too cold. We found we had to plan our route for the day carefully to make sure it didn’t involve us being somewhere outside for too long and we kept dashing into random shops just for the warmth.

Food in China so far has been an experience! We’ve had some very good meals and some where things didn’t work out quite as we expected… So to start with the good. Dongfang Jiaozi Wang (Eastern King of Dumplings) is indeed the King of Dumplings! We tried dumplings a few times in Harbin and these were definitely the best. Also they were around half the price of other places. They have a menu in English too! Well sort of, some of the literal translations have been quite amusing. I must remember to note some down in the future. Things like “The fire lights the bean moving” often randomly appear next to pictures of vegetable dishes. Somehow though we managed to negotiate this menu and order ourselves a few things which as far as I could tell contained no meat! Hurrah!

Although I did think for a second when this arrived that it might be snakes!

Luckily it turned out to be very tasty aubergines that we forgot we’d ordered. Phew.

We also had these mushrooms, described on the menu as edible tree fungus we had to try them.

I wondered what on earth had arrived when we got them! They turned out to be a type of mushroom very similar to jelly ears that grow commonly at home. The taste is fairly bland, but they came served with the hottest horse-raddish sauce I’ve ever tasted! Anymore that the tiniest dip on the edge and although it didn’t burn your tongue seconds later the sensation in your nose is as if all the hairs in your nostil are being stripped by strong acid, this is followed by fits of coughing and eye watering. Despite this the taste is so good you can’t stop yourself from trying it again and falling for the same nasty trick.

Our second meal in Harbin was not quite so successful. There is a food market on the high street which has a canteen style restaurant above it. We sat down, got the menu, compared it to our little dictionary and sheets of safe veggie stuff. We also had help from a waitress who could speak some English. Although there’s no real way to say I am a vegetarian, we showed her our page of Mandarin with the closest you can get, it says various things. “We eat vegetables”. “We DON’T eat Meat/Fish/Chicken”. She looked nodded, crossed off somethings we’d ordered and suggested some other things instead. Brilliant.

We thought we had ordered two types of vegetarian dumplings, a pancake filled with spring onions and some green tea. What actually arrived was dumplings which contained pork, not even pork and vegetable, just pork. A lovely cabbage and pork meatball soup and some orange juice, not green tea. The only thing we’d got right was the pancake. Oh well. Eating around the edges again. This blinking pork is tormenting us.

At least we didn’t end up with a plate of these little creatures which were on sale downstairs, wriggling around in a pot in the middle of the salad section!

Another thing we discovered in Harbin is that the Chinese like to serve their soup in ridiculously big portions. We went to one place and ordered what we thought would be small bowl of soup. It was really cheap, we nearly ordered two so we could have one each, but decided instead to order other things to try then share the soup. But look at this enormous vat that arrived! Also contrast to the tiny size of the bowls to eat it from! There was at least 20 servings of soup in it! All for around £1. Crazy!

I’ll leave it at that for now. More to come from Harbin including the most amazing market I’ve ever been to and photos from the famous Ice Festival.

We had a fairly quiet first day really. We went to pick up the tickets for the next stage of the journey from our friend John. However when we got there he realised he’d lost them. Oops. Two tickets to Moscow thrown out with the rubbish. Luckily he was able to get them re-issued although it sounds as though it was a complete nightmare. Russians seem to have a great fondness for bureocracy. The process involved many forms,lots of signatures, much confusion and of course a fine. Something he tells us you get used to after a short time of living in Russia. It seems that as well as the liking for official documentation that corruption and bribes are very much an accepted part of everyday life. 30 kph over the speed limit? 300 rubles = no problem.

While we were over at John’s we went to the supermarket, where we bought some of the amazing salads the seem to sell pretty much everywhere in Russia. Check out this plate of yumminess:

The strange things that look like tuna are actually aparagus although I and no one I asked had any idea how it had been prepared. It was kind of like a crinkly tube with a really odd texture, a bit like a juicy rolled up finger from a rubber glove. Bizarrely this texture made it a very pleasant thing to eat. The round things are a type of smoked cheese. We bought almost half a kilogram of this and it only cost us around ??1.50. Prices seem to vary wildly. Often we’d see what appears to us to be 2 identical items, but one might be one price, the other 5 times more. We were probably eating dirty tramp food, but I thought it was really tasty.

Andy and I left John to look after his poorly girlfriend the first night and on his recommendation went to a bar called Fidels, which is on the road just to the side of the big shopping centre on Nevsky Prospect . Great bar, about a third the price of anywhere else we’d seem, also much better atmosphere.

Anyway, so it was here we got decided to act like the Russians and start drinking Vodka. Except that we didn’t act quite ike the Russians and forgot to match each vodka with ??????? (Zakooska – a small snack) and instead choose to match each vodka with a beer. Big mistake.

After only a short time the vodka had well and truely caught us out. I remember first sitting quietly chatting to each other, then taking to strangers, then giving out our emails, then dancing, and by the end of the night finding it really quite tricky just to walk in a straight line. It was that kind of drunk where it hits you so quick you’re well aware of losing your abilities, but have absolutely no way of doing anything about it. We woke up the next morning with writing on our arms and a note pad full of people’s email addresses and our various sribbled attempts at writing our names and where we were from in Russian.

Drawing of a watch, time reads “NOW”

We didn’t manage to get out of bed unti 4pm. John and Sasha invited us around for dinner. John made us a lovely mushroom risotto, made with wild mushrooms that Sasha’s Mum had picked earlier in the year. It seems in Russia, as with most other countries we’ve visited so far people don’t have this irrational fear of fungus that weare conditioned with at home. It’s common for people to go picking here, most people would easily be able to identify the edible mushrooms and know what to do with them. I’m not sure whether or not I would really like this to catch on at home. It does seem to be becomming a little more popular, with foraged wild food a must in any trendy restaurant. However if everyone cottons on to it there will be none left when we go hunting. Yes we need a few more of the scare stories please. Mushrooms are bad, often very poisonous. You can die you know. In seconds! Aaaargh!

After the meal we headed for town to visit a few bars. Andy knew John from Uni and it seems that since then he has transformed himself into a kind of international superstar DJ, and is quite well known in Russia. This was really handy as it gave us access to bars that would otherwise really have been impossible to go to. We went to one place completely unmarked. You had to knock on the door, someone would open it, say hello to John and Sasha then welcome us in. Apparently there are quite a few of these ‘friends’ bars. It was a really nice place, quite funky decor, a dj and very nice, if a little expensive, Belgian beer. It seems the people who run them have enough friends to keep them going so they don’t really need tourists or other random people off the street wandering in to crash their party.

Our next day in St Petersburg just kept going wrong from the start. The kind of day you just want to give in and go to bed. We’d got up and walked and walked taking in the sites until we wanted lunch. The plan was to go to the Hermitage after we’d eaten, but after faffing around getting hungry and frustrated trying to find places the guides had recommended we eventually gave up and just went anywhere. Our food took forever to come and by the time we got to the Hermitage it was only 2 hours until closing. I read somewhere that this place has like a hundred million pieces and even if you looked at each one for just a second it would take around 7 years to go round the whole place. We obviously didn’t have enough time. We did attempt to go in, but after buying tickets we were directed to the cloakrooms, a huge long corridor packed full of fur-coat clad Russians pushing and shoving their way around. I couldn’t stand it. We just had to get out. Somehow we managed to get our money back on the tickets quite easily and practically ran outside to our freedom. Never again. I’m not sure when would be a good time to visit that place. We thought we’d gone at an off-peak time, I hate to imagine what it would be like in the summer.

Thankfully once we’d given up on doing the tourist thing the evening did get better. We went to a lovely Georgian restaurant for dinner called Aragvi. Georgain food is probably the best option for veggies in Russia. With an emphasis on salads and bean dishes there was lots of choice. In fact it was a bit like my favorite place in Manchester, Aladdins.

We had Lobio a kind of slightly spicy crushed bean stew with lots of paprika, a Georgian salad which was just a normal kind of salad stuff, but then a great heap of parsley on it and we also had a cheesy bread, the name of which I have forgotten. This bread was amazing! It was very rich though and more than one in a lifetime would probably be enough to give you a heart attack. There was a good centimeter of melty cheese covering the entire top. This is the kind of place where its good to go with a few friends so you can get a good range of dishes to share between you. If you do this I would recommend only getting one of these cheesy breads between four people, rather than eating half each like we did, or you will end up going to bed feeing like a whole person has somehow crept into your stomach, refused to leave and fallen asleep.

On our last day in St P all enthusiasm for the Hermitage lost we went instead to the Kunstkamera Museum. Without doubt the craziest museum I’ve ever been to. It was began as a collection of various artifacts of scientific interest from around the world by Peter the Great in 1714 to build Russia’s understanding and scientific knowledge. He sent people around the globe to collect items and also offered payment for anything unusual. So the place now contains huge glass cabinets full of the standard various bits and bobs of small tribes and artifacts from around the world, but then at the back there’s a room full of glass jars of pickled deformed feotuses. Babies with two heads, no heads, placentas with five babies attached and skeletons of small children with various conditions. After a few minutes it’s all a bit much really.

In the evening we said our farewells to John and Sacha over a traditional Russian meal at a lovely Russian restaurant. A place I would really recommend…. if I could find the link. Although if you’re strict veggie perhaps don’t opt for their “cabbage soup” schi. Ours came complete wth huge chunks of fatty pork. Mmm.

That bit floating around just to the bottom right of the sour cream is a big dirty lump of fatty pork. This probably actually means it’s a good quality schi, but to us it just meant yet again picking bits out and eating something we knew contained meat. Luckily this doen’t really bother either of us too much having decided it’s better to just accept it will happen and get on with it rather than starve or miss out on local specialities. And the soup was very nice. I can imagine for some veggies though that eating out in Russia could be really a struggle. I’m also becomming worried that all the soups we have tried so far were only so tasty because they were made with meat stock. I’ll have to work on creating the perfect vegetarian stock if I’ll be able to replicate them well at home. But I have an idea for the secret ingredient and I’m looking forward to giving it a go. This place claims on it’s advertisement that their stock, made in the traditional way, takes over 8 hours to make, so maybe that’s the key? Long and slow. Usually a good thing.

So apart from the meaty vegetarian soup this was a great place. They specialise in blinies and have over 40 different types on their menu. They serve Kvass, a kind of Russian homebrew beer drink with a very low alcohol content. I thought it tasted a bit like coke, but without the sensation that it could easily strip your insides. They also do these great chip type things which are fried with wild mushrooms. Lovely jubly.

So that was that. St Petersburg, tick! Thanks to John and Sasha for all the help and guidance around your great city.

John, Sasch and Kvass.

After St Petersburg an overnight train took us to Moscow for a quick one day stay with some of John’s friends. They had a really nice flat on Tverskaya Lamskaya, the Moscow equivelant of London’s Oxford St, just two minutes stroll to Red Square. Brilliant.

We didn’t really do too much in Moscow. To be honest I think we were both a bit tired from all the wandering around and Vodka experience in St Petersburg so now we really just wanted a nice chilled day. Went to Lenin’s Mausoleum to see Lenin’s dead body. This was a strange experience. The enormous marble tomb on Red Square was very dimly lit and at the foot of each stairwell and the end of each corridor stood a very serious looking Russian soldier only just visible in the darkness. When you enter the room with the body you are forbidden from stopping even for a second, despite the fact that only one or two other people are there. So you slowly walk around each edge of the glass case peering in at a preserved body. Very odd.

So after a quiet eveniing eating Pizza and watching football at Paul and Iena’s and a couple of drinks in a local bar we had an early night in preparation for the next few days adventure, the 86 hour train journey on the Trans-Siberian to Irkutsk.

After some debate over whether what we were finding really were chantarelles, or the similar looking, but rather less tasty and occasionally hallucinogenic false chantarelles we have finally given them a go. We’d gone to visit one of our friend Viv’s old lichen hunting grounds near Glen Coe and were clambering around old mossy woods near a disused crypt when we found a few good patches of them hiding in amongst the fallen autumn leaves. Luckily with our edible mushroom expert to hand we were able to confirm they were the real thing and gathered a few dozen to take home with us.

Chantarelles have to be one of the prettiest mushrooms there are. So brightly coloured, they can be hard to spot as they are alsmost the same colour as the leaves they hide in. They have a very distinctive fruity smell, like apricots. There are a few other distinguishing features, the gills separate into twos or three and occasionally rejoin, I believe doesn’t the false chantarelle gills ever rejoin. They also are a more irregular shape, although until I’ve seen a false one I’m not sure how obvious this would be.

As yet I’m still cooking the wild mushrooms I find simply so I can understand what they taste like before complicating things with sauces, so I just fried these in a bit of butter with salt and pepper and had them on scrabled eggs on toast. I believe they would be excellant for a risotto, or stroganoff, so next time I’ll give that a go. Hopefully we’ll find some more soon, although down on the Wirral we’re still experiencing a mushroom drought. I’m sure they’ll come soon. There’s been weeks of dry weather, but after I mentioned the other day I was hoping for rain to bring mushrooms it came. In fact it’s been pouring down a good few times a day ever since. I’ve heard this is ideal to set them off, so fingers crossed.

This is the final post from the UK tour, things will be back to normal from here, less of the random traveling waffle and a return to recipes and rants. Colonsay was the last island stop on our tour, we had intended to go further, but the WWOOFing season finishes earlier than we expected, we couldn’t find anywhere to take us on the whole western side of Scotland except for one week at the very end of September meaning we’d have a two week gap to fill. Unexpected stays at B+Bs, and a lack of wwoofing opportunities meant we were flying well over our budget, the weather just seemed to get worse and worse, we kept getting attacked by ticks, both picked up a nasty cough and decided something was trying to tell us to go home. Only a little earlier than planned and it means hopefully Andy should be able to get his thesis written before the new year, so it’s all good. Plus it’s been sunny down here. Hurrah! Although all I want it to do now is rain so the mushrooms will come, a woods we’d visited a while ago which was full of them was completely dried out, nothing but a few battered old russulas and big squishy brown things to be found. Boooo. Seems silly to be wanting rain after cursing it for weeks.

Anyway so Colonsay, absolutely lovely place. It’s quite small, so you can really feel at home after just a couple of days. We were wild camping (there are no official camp sites there at all) and the first night camped at Kiloran Bay at the top of the island, which is absolutely beautiful. A huge golden sandy beach, crazy cave systems which go on for miles and we only saw two other people there. I spotted a pond of watercress, which I’ve never seen growing wild before. We tried a bit which was very tasty, so spicy I don’t think you could eat too much of it, but it was incredible to see it all there. Considering you’d usually pay a pound for a small bag, here was a huge pond full of hundreds of pounds worth of the stuff. We also found some mint by the river that runs down to the beach and used some to make some mint tea. Something strange seemed to happen to us after we’d drank it, Andy was telling strangers to drive their car through the sea and we both got a bit giddy, kept giggling and pulling faces at each other. Very odd, good fun though. Must be special mint, maybe it’s like when you give cats cat nip.

watercress pond

It’s described as one of the last great wildernesses. It’s a fair size, yet only has 200 inhabitants who are outnumbered 25:1 by deer. There’s just the one road, running across the bottom and up the east of the island and nowhere else. If you wanted to go anywhere else you’d have to walk over rough ground. It’s not like the peak district, there’s no paths or styles, you just make your own way and will most likely get eaten alive by ticks if you do. Given all this it’s amazingly quiet and peaceful. The bay by the main (only) town (1 hotel, 1 shop and a distillery) is quite protected by surrounding land so the waters are really still. If you stop walking you realise the only sounds you’ve been hearing are your rustling jacket and footsteps. Quite eerie. At one point while I was wandering around on my own I started feeling like I was living in an episode of Twin Peaks. The mist over the water, the  hotel, the steam from the whisky factory, I though Bob was going to come and get me.

The world’s third largest whirlpool the Corryvrekan can be seen off the top coast of the island. We did attempt to go, but only realised when the road suddenly stopped that it was still at least a 6 mile trek to the top of the island to see it and we were totally unprepared for it. An excuse to go again. It would make a great weekend, you can drive up to the end of the road then set off with your camping gear, you’d pass by George Orwell’s house on the way and there are big cave systems near the whirlpool you can stay the night in.

One big plus about he place is that the campsite is free! Woop! The Jura Hotel very kindly let you camp in their garden, there’s shower and laundry facilities and it’s right on the coast. Beautiful. They just ask for a donation which goes to a local charity.

What’s that? You thought this was a food blog not a travel guide? Erm… oh yeah we had shaggy ink cap pizzas for dinner, well sort of it was a poor man’s pizza (cheese on toast with tomato base and other toppings). I’d found a clump of about 5 of them by the path near the community gardens in Islay, so we picked them and cooked them up for our dinner when we arrived. They were ok. Aparently they make nice soup, will give that a go next time we find some.

ink caps

ink caps on toast

Just across from Kintyre, Islay is probably the biggest island we went to. We spent a fair amount of our time there in a B+B as Andy was ill and it rained everyday. It was strange being in a B+B when we’d been used to either tent or random hospitality from strangers. I realise this is how some people make a living, but the concept of having to pay someone £165 just to sleep in a bed for three nights and eat beans and scrambled eggs once a day seemed crazy. It must actually cost them all of about £5 per day. I don’t think they were really doing it to make ends meet as some places clearly do either, the house was well posh. AND they charged us £5 to do some washing! I wouldn’t mind if they’d have told us before were gong to add it the bill. Actually I would. Maybe we’ve just been spoilt as we’ve met so many kind people we weren’t ready for these money grabbing capitalists. Maybe we upset them. When she said I could use the kitchen to make some soup maybe she was expecting I’d just throw something in the microwave rather than start chopping leeks, potatoes and preparing a pile of wild mushrooms we’d gathered earlier in the day. I dunno. Anyway at least it was cosy. Actually it was a really nice B+B, 4 poster bed, use of a nice lounge and it was really kind of her to offer that we could use her kitchen, it’s just we missed being around interesting people who really did want to talk to us rather than just making polite small talk because they felt like they have to so you’d enjoy your stay and pay them.

Wild mushroom soup, made in B+B kitchen

So Islay, really good for Whisky (there’s at least 8 distilleries) and birds (over 200 species). Unfortunately I don’t really have an interest in either. Hmmm not going well so far is it? The island is a weird shape too, it’s at least a 20 mile trip between any two places, so really you have to drive. With petrol at £1.20 or more this was not a good thing. This is all getting rather depressing. I’ll probably also get some hate mail from Islay lovers too if I’m not careful so I’ll get back to the positives.

They have a brilliant community garden. It’s huge and appears to be really well looked after. They have a small shop to sell the produce and the schools are involved in some kind of a project to help them distribute the food, some kind of box scheme is being developed I think. The garden is in the grounds of Islay House and used to be a kitchen garden just to supply the house. However I think the owners got skint and it seems everything fell into disrepair. I guess the house has been sold on now and in 2005 the completely overgrown inaccessible garden was taken on as a community project. It’s hard to believe how much they have done in this short time, it looks so well established, has huge amounts of fruit and vegetables growing and two fantastic polytunnels full of squashes and tomatoes. We bought quite a bit of stuff from here. It kept us going for most of our time in Islay and a bit more for only about £6.

community garden shop

The other good thing is Islay Ales. They have a shop at the craft centre in Bridgend. You can try all the different beers they make, and also they do a small tour/talk if you ask. Very friendly. It was here I found out that Leann is Gaelic for Beer. How appropriate. I wonder if my parents knew this when they named me. Hello, my name is Beer. Brilliant.

Oh nearly forgot, the first night we were in Islay we decided to give wild camping a go. In 2003 the law in Scotland changed meaning everyone has a statutory right to camp anywhere in Scotland. There is a code of conduct including things like keep out of sight of houses, arrive late leave early, generally being considerate, but basically you can camp anywhere you like. It’s great. Well it would be if unlike us you don’t end up camping near to what turns out to be the main route from the ferry to the town. Oops. Huge Whisky lorries going past all night waking us up every hour probably contributed to the illness that then kept Andy in bed for the next 3 days. We’ve since had better luck with our choice of sites and it really is a great thing if you need to save a bit of cash, or go places with no camp sites (ie Colonsay or long distance hill walking). The only problem being that there obviously are no facilities. We probably made a suspiciously large number of visits to the public toilets on our trip, and didn’t have a proper shower for nearly 4 days at one point erlgh.

Here’s the recipe for the stew we made to celebrate our first ever night of wild camping on Islay made with some of the veg we’d bought from the community gardens.

Lentil and Spinach Stew

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, crushed
• 175g red lentils
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 4 tsp stock powder
• 1 tbsp Henderson’s relish
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 medium carrot, cubed
• 250g chopped spinach
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1. Gently fry the onion until soft then add the cumin seeds and fry for 1 more minute.
2. Add the garlic, lentils, tomatoes, stock powder, hendersons and about 1 litre of water. Bring to the boil then simmer for about 20 minutes untilthe lentils are falling apart.
3. Add the spinach and carrots and cook for a further 15 minutes until the carrots are soft.
4. Serve with rice or bulgar wheat.

You might notice from the picture we’d also added courgette to it this time, but that was just because we’d been given it at the gardens, normally this stew doesn’t have courgette in. It doesn’t really matter, it’s lovely either way.