I'm getting used to Moscow now but it was a bit of a culture shock after St Petersburg which is tiny in comparison. St Petersburg seems to be designed by women for women with all the fairytale-esque pastel coloured buildings, not to mention the catwalk show which was Nevsky Prospect. Moscow is altogether more masculine and on a huge scale; the buildings are towering awe inspiring structures and the city is encircled by a series of ring roads which twenty lanes of...

Hey People, thanks for the mesages :) will reply as I can. Since my last blog we've come to Moscow by sleeper train, which was very exciting and I'm looking forward to our next epic train journey to Irkutsk tomorrow night. When Laura and I boarded the train it was pitch black and we spent the 20 minutes before the train set off frantically trying to put our beds together in the dark with the help of my torch and the hindrance of our rucksacks. The two Russian la...

Hello, Today is my third full day in St Petersburg, and I feel as though I'm finally getting the hang of Russia and everything that goes with it. I've spent the last couple of days wandering around trying to get my bearings. I'll admit, the first day I felt very dazed and confused and very homesick. The Russians or at least 'Pieters' came across as really unfriendly; nobody speaks English and my attempts at reading Russian from my phrase book were not well recei...

(I'm actually in St Petersburg at the moment but it wouldn't let me go back so I thought I may as well include Helsinki while I could) We have arrived! Everything has gone to plan so far. Flew into Helsinki last night. It was snowing but somehow seemed a lot warmer than Middlesbrough did last week. Caught the Sibelius train to St Petersburg this morning (took 7 hours) and went past lots of pretty snow covered trees, and some frozen lakes, and some more snow. St ...

Helloooo So it's the night before I go and I have just finished doing some last minute panic research into Vietnamese visas. Which actually seems quite simple and probably could have waited until I got to China. I think I have everything I need, though I don't seem to have done much considering the scale of my trip. However much I do though, there'll always be one more thing I could have researched; and as I keep trying to reassure myself as long as I have pass...