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2-1-2000: Troy + Lissa = Zoe

Zoe was born at 7:14pm (3.175 kg). Another baby girl! Great - more girls, more fun! Seems like the Monkey's & ex-Monkey's are all breeding like, well... Monkey's!?!

11-8-99: Baby Pat

Little Monkey brother is now the proud father of a healthy 4.4 kg descendant of Genghis. Altai will remain in Mongolia for at least the traditional 40 days. Our latest member of the family was given the name Naranbat, for which I still didn't get a translation.

10-8-99: Statistics

Compairing numbers with last year we can only comfirm the going trend. Bookings made by e-mail are still at 47%; the non-smokers group gets stronger and reached 82%; vegetarians are multiplying as well - up from 9 to 16%. Again many English teachers left their jobs in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to travel the rails - one third of all our travellers are teachers! (Smart folks!)

1-8-99: New prices in Russia

Prices for domestic train tickets came down from the first of August. Good news for many of our travellers who got some refunds upon arriving in Moscow, and a lot of additional work for us. We nevertheless hope prices will go down even further!

14-8-99: Baby Chris

A baby girl for Chris and Fan Fan! Congratulations to both! Look at the happy father and his daughter Li-an. Lianne, or is it Lee An? Babies all over the place: Naveed expanded his family with twin girls, now Chris, soon Pat...

7-6-99: Accident ex-Monkey Neil

Reported by Becky, another ex-Monkey now running the Russia Experience in London: "Some fairly shitty news - Monkey Neil has been involved in a car crash. He's basically ok, but the whole of his left side is fucked up - broken shoulder, broken collarbone, cracked ribs and a badly broken leg - they nearly amputated it to get him out of the car. He's in hospital and has had a pin put into his leg from knee to ankle. Despite all that, there is no head injury, nerve damage or spinal damage. He's apparently in quite good form and annoying the nurses."

More news from 1998 an before ..

 

Early Days!

Before computers, email and so on, our work was much harder, with people turning up on our doorstep wanting to start the tran ride the next day! Pages and pages of faxes were sent between Hong Kong and Beijing, ordering tickets, calculating numbers, checking on payments, asking for more peanuts, and so on.

Eastern 98:

Split'em up and put'em in a train More people go digital, non-smoking and vegetarian each year. Just checked for this year: 47% of bookings made via e-mail, 51% don't want cigarette smoke up their lungs, and 9% are lucky we can feed them in Mongolia because they're sworn vegies!

12-97: Chief goes to DC

A workshop organized by the Farsight Institute, and a free courier flight to Philadelphia, and I was off to the States last December. I stayed with Mark's cousin in Washington DC (actually with his landlord - a great chap I was lucky to meet), and had the chance to spend some time with BB, our ex-guide from UB. What can I say? A wonderful week went by in a flash! Completely jet-lagged, overwhelmed by all the new impressions, new and old friends, good food, great music, splendid Smitsonian museums, etc. I was so busy having a good time that I forgot about my appointment with Bill! This was my first chance to spend those dollars in the country they've been printed in.

1-7-97: The hang-over

Since we haven't found a way to stop time yet, the clock on Tiananmen Square in Beijing reached a neat row of zero's, and that was it. We're now part of China once more, though with a different system. If it will stay different for the promissed 50 years remains to be seen. The next morning started off very early with the police raiding the whole of Chunking Mansions. Guess they wanted to show off their new badges! The rain that marked the hand-over continued, and did so for the rest of July, breaking all records. A sign of things to come?

30-6-97: The bend-over

If you've been watching the events on your telly, you've probably seen more than me down here in Hong Kong. Too much work to even read the program about all the events at hand. When the fireworks started at 8pm, Nathan Road was so packed with people, that is was impossible to get any further then 50 meters from Chungking Mansions. We saw some parts of it inbetween the buildings and the umbrella's of the selfish (half of HK).

18-5-97:

First through-train services between Kowloon and Beijing The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC) through-trains, connecting the Hong Kong territory with Beijing and Shanghai, begin operations today. Trains from Kowloon Station at Hunghom to Beijing and Shanghai run on alternate days.

May-97:

New visa regulations for Mongolia A new consul was appointed to the Mongolian embassy in Beijing. At the same time, new visa regulations came into effect. You can now apply for a tourist visa valid for one month without the previous visa support or invitation! Our partner in Mongolia said that these new rules apply worldwide, but rules and Mongolians are concepts that don't go well together. How it used to be: The embassy could only issue a tourist visa valid up to 30 days when the application was backed by a visa support or an invitation. A recognized tour operator (like our partners in Mongolia) needed a special registration number and each support had to go via the ministry, costing time, money and connections. The tour operator had to justify each invitation, pay for it, and was taxed accordingly. During a short time in the summer of '96, some Mongolians were selling invitations in front of the embassy. Others managed to get their visa without support by talking to the consul... The Mongolian embassy in Paris (amongst others) never implied any rule and easely gives out tourist visas. Thanks to our excellent relations with the embassy staff, we always managed to get visas for our passengers, even within a day's notice. Some events to picture the difficulties we surmounted. -Wife of consul is in Beijing, so no visas are issued that day as it is shopping-day! -Key of the safe where passports are kept is lost, missing, or in someone else's pocket. -We receive a pile of passports, check them and find some don't belong to us. Sometimes our passports are given to others who don't check at the embassy and take off with them! -A 'contribution' of US$5 per visa was suggested. We refused and had to go through a difficult time. How it is now: Though the new rules should make it easier for all and promote travel to Mongolia we expect a lot of problems. --Many travellers will enter Mongolia without reservations for tickets out and will face difficulties. -Special permits are still needed for most regions out of Ulaanbaatar. -The Chinese embassy in Ulaanbaatar is the worst we've dealth with. Expensive, only open a few days a week, reluctant to give a visa for more then a month, etc. Those on the way (back) to China better beware! -A minority of travellers is abusing the generous hospitality of the nomads. More people = more abuse