Moscow is cold, cold, cold! A biting wind comes straight out of Siberia and cuts straight through one. I queued in vain for three quarters of an hour for the Pushkin Museum this afternoon but a Picasso exhibition had just opened and the queue went right around the block. By the time I left I was frlozen solid and was probably only half way there, so that was a pity. But I spent the morning looking at the wonderful Russian icons in another museum and had ...

Well, the midnight train to Moscow wasn't quite as romantic as it sounded! I was delivered tothe station 2 hours before the train was due to go (erring on the side of caution, perhaps, but better than not being delivered at all, I suppose) and had to wait on a freezing platform - no waiting room, benches, etc until the train arrived. I fondly imagined that the train would miraculously be half empty and I'd have a compartment to myself, instead I found that I ...

At last! Internet facilities are pretty thin on the ground here, Ijust hope that things are better in China. So far so good - 3 and a half hour flight from London, 3 hours ahead and a half empty plane, so good service from BA and they even managed not to lose my bag (for which I had to pay excess - painful but inevitable!!!). Well, having arrived with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner being sent to the Gulag Archipelago in the snowy wastes of Siberi...