Where was the best food?
Again, this is a toughie. I’m not a big fan of Chinese food on the whole, but the food in Beijing was remarkably good. The food in Tokyo was also very good, especially the curry.

Which was the best train?
The German ICE from Berlin to Koln was the most comfortable daytime service; the Beijing to Shanghai ‘Z Class’ express was the nicest sleeper, the Japanese rail system had the most helpful staff and the Trans-Siberian trains were the most fun.

What was your favourite beer?
The one and only Beer Lao, though Cambodia’s Angkor and Russia’s Sibirskia Corona were pretty good too. China’s Tsingtao was definitely the cheapest; 640ml bottles for 2 yuan in Beijing. That’s about 15p or US$0.30.

How do you pronounce ‘Laos’?
There’s some debate about this one, though it certainly isn’t ‘Lay-oss’ Many people say ‘Louse’ but the proper name of the country is the Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic or the Lao PDR, and as a former part of French Indochina it seems likely that the S should be silent. Besides, ‘Louse’ is a horrible small crawling insect. I’m going for ‘Lao’, rhyming with ‘Mao’ (as in the chairman) and ‘Cow’ (unless you’re from the westcountry).

Where was the worst ho(s)tel you stayed?
The rudest staff member was in the Hotel Tsentralnya in Novosibirsk as featured in ‘The spy who rang me‘, although she was up against some pretty stiff competition. The most soulless place was probably the guest house on the Khao San road in Bangkok where I ended up for a night. The room looked like a prison cell. The single most unpleasant night was also one of the most expensive, at the HK hostel in Hong Kong, where I found my mattress infested with bed bugs and had to demand the security guard do something about it at 3am. I found a better, and cheaper, place the next day.

How did you get a Russian visa so easily/quickly? Did you need an itinerary?
There’s a lot of misinformation circulating amongst travellers about Russian visas. It’s not that hard really. Technically you need an itinerary but, depending on where you apply, this doesn’t need to be much more than a vague list of towns and hotels, and no-one expects you to keep to it once you get there. My visa support was arranged through WayToRussia.net who I’d thoroughly recommend.

What’s it like travelling on your own, did you get lonely?
Absolutely not! Travelling on your own is the best way to meet new people as well as do exactly what you want to do. It’s more sociable than travelling in a group.

How did you get from KL to Siem Reap?
I flew. Sorry. I feel like a cheat. I haven’t flown since though.

Are you going to publish a book?
I’m flattered that several people have suggested this. I’m looking into it. In the meantime I’m working on a calendar featuring some of the best pictures from the last 10 months.

Where are you going next?
To the bank, to beg for an extension on my overdraft, then to the job centre – I’m out of money; but if I had any, it’d be Eastern Europe from the Ukraine through to Greece, then I’d seriously consider India.

There are a lot of albums in the gallery marked ‘INCOMPLETE’ are you going to finish these?
Yes, there are a whole load more pictures to go up. I’ll post major additions here.

Is this the end of the blog/website?
No, but I’m not sure what’s going to happen here next. Any ideas?

Twenty years ago this was the site of the most heavily fortified border in the world; between East and West Berlin. Double walls topped with wire and lined with watchtowers, a patrol road in between, with guards, dogs and Kalashnikovs. This was a border created and patrolled by communist East Germany, the DDR, to contain and control an unhappy population desperate to escape to the bourgeois west. Some say that world war three nearly started right here, when US and Soviet tanks faced off across Checkpoint Charlie after a diplomatic dispute 45 years ago in October 1961.

Tak and I left Warsaw on the very comfortable, crowded, and ultimately rather late EC40, the Polish operated Berlin Warsaw Express, which was supposed to take six hours but ended up taking more than seven. After spending our remaining Zloty on some fine Polish beer and a lovely dinner in the restaurant car, the amiable men in uniform, Polish and German officers working their way down the train together, arrived for what will be my penultimate passport check, as there’s no border control between Germany and Belgium. From the station in the former East it was a short ride to the hostel, also in the former East, so this crossing of Checkpoint Charlie is the real deal.

Leaving the last hints of Lenin behind me, I walk along the former course of the wall to see the Brandenberg Gate and another dramatic scene of 20th century history, the Reichstag, which was reconstructed in the 1990s by architect Sir Norman Forster with a huge glass dome, and is once again the seat of the Bundestag, the German government. The fire that gutted it in 1933 ultimately gave Hitler the pretext he needed to abandon democracy, and some say that the Nazi government intentionally orchestrated the attack with this end in mind; that’s not all that different to some of those modern-day conspiracy theories is it?

The eleven hour journey started on Lithuanian train 193 from Vilnius which carried us, with the accompaniment of loud Lithuanian pop music, to the small town of Sestokai not far from the Polish border. This is where the Russian-built broad gauge railway that’s brought me all the way from Vladivostok meets the European standard gauge railway which crosses the border from Poland. A single island platform bewteen the two lines acts as a transit point for passengers like us, and acres of freight wagons occupy the surrounding sidings.

On board the Polish train we passed through the razor wire fence complete with watchtowers, clearly dating from the days when it marked the border of the USSR. I felt quite superior as my two intercontiental companions received a polite interrogation from the Polish immigration officer about their plans whilst I was left alone with the now familiar ambivalent passport glance and nod.

Twenty minutes down the line we arrived here at Suwalki, where the train is making a seemingly unending stop, and we’re not quite sure if it’s safe to wander off or not. The man we saw, presumably a regular passenger, had clearly wandered down to the large McDonald’s sign we can see towering in the distance to buy his lunch. Poland’s definitely changed rather dramatically since the days of Lech Walesa and food shortages.

Later, we begin to realise that the man clearly knew what he was doing. Despite the almost continual addition of new carriages to the train and passengers to fill them as we get closer to Warsaw, no amount of traversing the ever-lengthening corridors can find us any kind of refreshment vending facility. My dream of a nice cup of tea has to be tempered by Tak’s bottle of Lithuanian vodka and Phil’s crisps. As the train pulls into Warsaw and yet another set of golden arches punctuates the night sky, I resolve to myself that it’s better to be hungry and well-lubricated than to eat there anyway.

Before you ask, the idea of buying flowers for my arrival hasn’t even crossed my mind. I try and engage with local customs when I can, but handing Tak a bunch of flowers is in a similar league to eating cockroaches in Cambodia; sometimes you just have to draw the line, and I’m sure he’d agree. Tak, for those of you that don’t know, is short for Takayesu and the name of my Japanese friend and former neighbour in London. He’s going to be joining me for the ride via Warsaw to Berlin.

I left Riga on half-deserted Latvian train number 357, bound via Vilnius for somewhere in Belarus. My old university friend, Gena, came to see me off at the station at 7.40am. Another perfunctory EU check of my passport at the border an hour later was followed by the green fields and forests of Northern Lithuania. It was here that ballsy Lithuanian resistance fighters hid during their little-known war of attrition against the Soviet government during the 1950s. Five hours down the line and I was back in Vilnius, the capital, where unarmed ordinary people stood in front of Soviet tanks to defend the TV Tower and Parliament building on January 13th 1991, an event that turned out to be a turning point for Baltic independence.

Having seen the monuments at the parliament building 2 years ago, this time I resolved myself to visit the TV tower. It’s a mighty 1970s monstrosity, taller than the Eiffel tower, that comes complete with brightly coloured revolving restaurant on the viewing level and moving memorials down below for the 14 civilians that died here under the tanks that night just 15 years ago. These monuments, like the freedom monument back in Riga, are adorned with piles of fresh flowers laid by ordinary people. The Riga monument dates from independence in 1915, and they say there that the punishment for leaving flowers at it during the communist years was deportation to the Siberian gulags.

As people start to emerge from the flight, and necks crane eagerly with flowers at the ready, I’m reminded how much this place must have changed in fifteen short years. The cobbled streets and beautiful old buildings have never been better looked after; with more renovations currently underway. People can take cheap flights to London where they can earn a small fortune by local standards, and anyone can leave flowers where they want without fear of deportation to a concentration camp. I think I understand why the flower sellers are doing as well as the airlines and the builders.

“Riga Krasiva (Riga is Beautiful)”, says Andrei, clearly excited to? be visiting? his birthplace and childhood home. He says he doesn’t like Moscow but when I ask him why he lives there he looks like he wants to cry and says, “Russia is my country”. History in this region is recent, harsh and understandably bitter,? but I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor guy. I doubt he was the one? sending Latvians to a slow death in the gulags of Siberia.

Back on the 2nd December 2004 I wrote that “Riga almost seems like coming home now”. The place has changed; things have moved on, the cobbled streets are somehow cleaner, the shop windows shinier and everything on sale much much pricier than it used to be, but this time it? certainly is the most familiar place I’ve been in months, and of course,? this is where it all began.

“Imbecile!”, I hear you cry, “Schoolboy error! Why did you leave the Kremlin to the last day?”. Well, clearly it was a mistake, but? hindsight is a wonderful thing – who would have known? I arrived on Monday; my last day was Friday. The Kremlin is always closed on Thursday. I didn’t feel I had enough time for it after I arrived on Monday, or after I got up late on Wednesday (that was the cheap vodka), and? on Tuesday I? spent the day in? Gorky Park and the New Tretkayov gallery.

Disappointed, I catch the metro to Arbat street and browse the souvenir stalls. Moscow seems to get a tough review from a lot of tourists and? I can understand why. It isn’t a particularly easy or welcoming place to travel, there’s no tourist information, hotels and restuarants are expensive, the police might? try to extort money from you, the capital simply doesn’t have the glamour or scale of St Petersburg, and, as I’ve discovered,? major attractions can be suddenly closed without reason or notice.

Despite all this, I’ve really enjoyed myself here. Maybe? my expectations were? really low,? maybe? I’m used? to the Russian way, or maybe I just like the vodka, but the idea of having to come back one day to see inside the Kremlin doesn’t fill me with horror. I’ve seen some amazing things here.? There is the stunning, if slightly run down, metro system with it’s chandeliers and intricate plasterwork, an array of dazzling architecture like? the former state department store, GUM. Lenin was clearly Lenin and clearly dead in his mausoleum, but as corpses go he was more recognisable than Ho Chi Minh and? St Basil’s is a wonderful and absolutely unique building both inside and out. Above all, there’s the sense of presence? I get from being here; it’s Moscow, one of the most historically powerful and instantly recgnisable? cities in the world.

I walk around the back and? sure enough there are some ragged old buses standing on what clearly? used to be a large expanse of tarmac, but is now a large expanse of uneven dust and potholes. Clusters of people are sitting around chatting on a couple of rotting benches. Knowing the routine, I head? for the haggard double doors to see where I can buy a ticket; there are two sets of doors to negotiate and the space between them smells strongly of urine.? More people? are sitting on dilapidated plastic? chairs inside.

“Vladimir, Sledyushya (next)”, I say to the woman at the ticket window, hoping that I won’t have too long to wait. I? hand over 30 roubles (£0.60, US$1.10) and she scrawls ‘19:00′ and ‘26′ on the ticket. It’s 18:05, so I have to hang around this hell-hole for the best part of an hour, but? at least I? will have a seat (number 26). It’ll be a haggard old local bus with the seat numbers scrawled onto the wall, but sitting is definitely better than standing for an hour, particularly as it seems to be the law in Russia that buses absolutely must be packed to the eyeballs at all times. As I have time to spare, I decide? to? visit the bus station? toilet.? This turns out to be an extremely bad idea. I can see why people might find the space between the sets of doors preferable.

I’ve just visited the beautiful town of Suzdal, a fairy-tale collection of domed cathedrals, walled monasteries and traditional homes clustered along a small river and surrounded by farmland. It really is Russia at it’s best, and although there are crowds of tourists from home and abroad, mostly? on expensive day trips in luxury coaches? from Moscow,? it’s still a world away from the yobbish hordes in Prague or Amsterdam. Along with? nearby Vladimir, where I’m staying, it will be one of the highlights of my visit. The bus station however, is Russia at it’s worst; built? sometime around? 1972 and left to rot ever since. Completely incovenient for the town, though it’s a blessing that? it’s far away enough to be out of view, and, for a? few? dozen bus services a day, completely and utterly pointless, but then this is Russia? and I’m used to that now.

Early the next morning I begin the three and a half hour ride to Moscow on train number 31, the Vyatka, originating in the city of Kirov, famous for it’s ballet. For such a short journey (by local standards)? I’ve opted for the cheaper open dormitory platskartny carriage and I’m surrounded by sleeping Russians. It’s Monday, 6.30am in Moscow and as I sit with my cup of tea watching the sun rise to the east behind the train, I ponder this vast network and vast country that I’ve just travelled across. Back in Novosibirsk it’s 9.30am and the start of the working week. Around Lake Baikal it’s 11.30 and? fishermen are cooking up the? Omul they’ve just caught for lunch.? In Vladivostok, some 9000km (5600 miles)? away,? it’s 1.30pm and the cafes and coffee bars are rammed with lunchers.

Everywhere in between, hundreds of these trains are? trundling east, west, north and south on multi-day journeys from the? Baltic coast to the Pacific, Mongolia, China, Kazahkstan, the Black Sea and the Ukraine.? Platform vendors are touting fresh produce at long stops, and travellers are drinking tea, beer and kantrabanda vodka with rye bread and instant noodles in their kupeys.? It’s a bit? like? the extreme contrasts in Suzdal;? parts of Russia are truly dysfunctional but the rail network, though? not especially? fast or luxurious,? is an impressive logistical achievement.

The train is bound for Moscow but Nikolai is headed home to his wife and seven year old son in the city of Nizhny Novgrod, some seven hours short of the capital, after visiting his parents in Novosibirsk. I’m on? a 43 hour ride? to the town of Vladimir, the? 12th century? capital of Russia, about? 200km east of the big city and? home to a dazzling array of gold-domed cathedrals and monasteries.

Somehow I instinctively manage to wake myself in time. At? about 4am in Moscow, 7am in Novosibirsk I sit up in my bunk and peer out of the window? into the darkness, knowing that we must be about there. Apparently this location is the real deal; it’s? all to do with drainage basins and watersheds. Somewhere near the marker post that says we’re 1777km from Moscow, a large white obelisk protrudes into the early morning sky beside the track.? This marks the? official spot where Asia ends and Europe begins. As the train? starts a noticeable downward gradient and? I drift back off to sleep, home somehow seems a whole lot closer.