Kit: Bags

First up, are the mummy & daddy bags. Marcelle thought she had seen the last of backpacking when her old Berghaus rucksack went mouldy and had to be chucked out a couple of years ago. She was delighted to see a Tactical 5.11(www.511tactical.com) 50 litre backpack with her name written on it! We bought two. They were £100 and the material, zips and build quality seem good value for money.

This company makes special ops style stuff and their website seems to sell knives and things to kill people with, so I was up for buying one of their bags. After all, we are travelling to the wilds of Mongolia...

The bag has a shed load of zips, pockets and space to attach pouches via a molle system, as well as a laptop pocket. It is also very comfortable to wear. Seen also in the photo is a rucksack cover (for heavy rainfall and protecting the bag from light fingers if it is up on top of a jeep/camel/luggage rack) and a reusable John Lewis shopping bag (no contributing to China's plastic bag rubbish mountains then...).                

                                                    
We looked everywhere for a backpack for Maisie. They were either too big, or too cheaply made. In the end, I was back in Bristol recently, and went in to see the friendly people in Nomad (nomadtravel.co.uk). We looked at several of the backpacks designed for children and came up with this 15 litre Lowe Alpine number.

We aren't planning for her to carry her own clothes, but she will take along whatever she needs to amuse her on the trip. This little beauty has a large main compartment, a smaller compartment for pens and paper and a third, smaller pocket on the front. Best of all, Maisie has found the hole for her iPod earphones to thread through! I was a little disappointed about a lack of elasticated side pockets for a flask. Her comments about it so far are 'comfy' and 'good colours'.

Let's see if it stays comfy for six weeks...




In the same shop I also saw a backpack which was Harry sized. The Berghaus 8 litre 'Hands Off!' is touted as a starter backpack and it is a miniaturised version of an adults day pack. It's just the right size to fit in a couple of superheroes, a bag of marbles and some cars. It only has one compartment, but I think with little children, this is no bad thing.

Somehow, I think it's small size and therefore low weight will still be a bone of contention for the boy child, who complains when even carrying his pyjamas up to bed. Luckily it will stow in the top or clip to the side of one of our bags when the moaning starts...








As Marcelle will attest, I have a lot of bags. I love bags and boxes and empty black notebooks. I think it will be great to get old and be able to tinker around in a shed.

Try as I might, none of the bags I had were small enough to be worn with a backpack or large enough to hold passports, a book and a camera. I had looked at some of the Tactical 5.11 bags and some Maxpedition ones, but they had ammo holsters for goodness sake. I didn't fancy going through Russia looking like an Alabama gun nut.

So instead I went as pretentious as I could and bought a Lomography 'Sidekick' (www.lomography.com). It's some kind of retro-fashonista-manbag thing that you'd find on a dreadful website like urban outfitters or cool hunting, but like I said, I like bags...

This one is made from pretty rough looking canvas, semi padded for camera protection and has more pouches than a troop of kangaroos. The front bit comes off so you can hold it like one of those post modern men's purses. Especially useful in a yurt.
          

  See Amazon: Lomography Sidekick Standard Bag (Charcoal)                                   

Planning: Moscow to London

The  last few weeks have not been very easy with the planning. My intention had been to go from Moscow to St Petersburg, and then from there a ferry to Helsinki. From Helsinki, another ferry would take us to Stockholm, and from there it was a train to Copenhagen. The last leg would take us from from Copenhagen to Amsterdam and then Hook of Holland to the delights of Harwich.                              

However, this was to be done over two weeks which, was a tight timeframe. Not a problem as we are rushing past most places on this trip. The big stumbling block was cost. It was clearly going to cost a fortune. Just the first couple of ferry costings put it way out of our budget.

Back to the man in seat 61 (www.seat61.com) and we have been in contact with train companies to take us back from Moscow to London as directly as possible. The first inquiry has been to go from Moscow to Cologne (2 day train ride) and then from Cologne to Brussels, finishing with the Eurostar into Kings Cross St Pancras. This is still being desperately researched...

UPDATE 8th June: Through Monkeyshrine we bought Moscow to Cologne tickets. The total cost was €1,432 or £1,185. We then bought tickets between Cologne and Brussels on the Thalys train and between Brussels and London St Pancras on the Eurostar. We used  www.raileurope.com for this. The total for the four of us was £292.

Planning: Beijing to Moscow

Now, I do like to travel as independently as I can and I like the challenge of finding my way from A to E (bad sense of direction...), however, travelling through China is not the easiest of options. This is where the people at Monkeyshrine come into the equation (www.monkeyshrine.com). The deal is that they will organise train tickets, visas and side tours from the train route. It is NOT cheap. In fact it is expensive. The reasons that we went for this option are:

1. Recommendations from friends who have done it and said it was worth every penny and was a remarkable experience.
2. Ease. I am dealing with Matt in the Hong Kong office and the whole process is smooth. These people have been doing this since 1988 and they can answer any query.
3. Time. We will be racing forwards at all points in this journey and won't have the time to make the most of Mongolia, the Steppes, the Gobi desert and Lake Baikal unless we do something pre organised.
4. Flexibility. Have a look at their website and download their tour guide. They tailor trips to everyone's specs but I would be surprised if you couldn't find an option that suited you.

Now for the painful news. To get from Beijing to Moscow will cost €1969  for adults and €1383 for children. I left it a couple of days before putting the numbers through a currency convertor (living in SE Asia for the past eight years and I have no clue about how much a Euro is worth...). 5,700 Quid!

Yes it is a lot, but for that you get 17 days of touring, all the trains and other transport, 3 days each in the Gobi desert, Mongolian Steppes and Lake Baikal, as well as accommodation in Beijing, Ulan Bator and Moscow.

Planning: Hanoi to Beijing

OK. The next leg of the journey takes us from Vietnam to China by rail. To research this was very easy, courtesy of the wonderful www.seat61.com. I discovered that there was a twice weekly sleeper every Tuesday and Friday which takes 44 hours to do the trip. However, it is apparently quite difficult to acquire the tickets in advance, and I didn't want to just arrive on the day to find the tickets sold out.

After another bit of internet trawling I came up with www.waytovietnam.com who will buy the train tickets for you and deliver them to your hotel. I have been dealing with the rather helpful Ms Huong Bui who provided me with bank transfer details in order to buy the tickets. They were $310 dollars a head and we have secured a four person sleeper cabin.

Planning: Vietiane to Hanoi

Planning this part of the trip had been the biggest difficulty. If we couldn't find a way to do this leg, then we would have to use a route through Cambodia and the whole of Vietnam which would be a long way round. I had already read that the 24 hour bus journey through Laos was also known as "the bus ride from hell" and didn't think I could really sell this to my family, not even in my most cup-half-full optimistic of moods. (Look it up on www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/index.jspa and www.thaivisa.com/forum/) Also, other people had said it just wasn't practical in rainy season and that Laos roads weren't up to it, blah, blah, groan, mumble, snipe, etc, etc.

This is where I came across the rather helpful Europcar website (www.avr.laopdr.com/) and the wonderfully named Joe Rumble. Someone called Joe Rumble sounds just the sort of chap to help you with difficult journey logistics, doesn't he? Well, he did. We are picking up a driver of a Ford Everest who will be driving us from Vientiane to Hanoi, via a strange place I have always wanted to visit called 'The Plain of Jars'. According to Joe, we'll get into Hanoi the next day.