WICE a week, at 9.10 of a morning, there pulls out from Manchuli, on the Manchukuo border, one of the world's most remarkable trains—the Trans-Siberian express, says Lawrence mey in the. "Daily Mail."
I have just travelled home from Peking'to London by this eXciting overland route, and my diary of the trip has some "strange entries now I come to look back on it.
Here's a sample:
"We-are a motley gathering as we leave Manchoukuo, Mostly women, some with wives or daughters of men who are remaining in Dairen, Tienstin, Shanghai, or Hongkong, to watch their business interests at this critical time. One or two among us are business men dashing to London, Paris, or Berlin to inform our office headquarters of conditions in the Far East. We have our baggage turned topsy-tury by the Manchoukuo Customs officials, and now: submit to the same critical examination at the hands of the Soviet "comrades."
"What they expect to find in it is hard to imagine, as the items which attract most attention are a book of family snapshots and any form of personal letters, which they. endeavour to read with the utmost interest. Money, of course, is counted and recounted and entered on an official form signed by both parties. And. then we change our sterling at the rate of 12 roubles to the 1s. 8d. per route at frontier value.
One unfortunate woman has unguardedly allowed her s to carry a box of chocolates, a tennis racket, a thermos flask, a cake, a bag of orangs, plus her suit-cases, and protests bitterly at a bill of 12s. for porterage.
We who are wiser festoon ourselves with packages. A police officer from Hongkong strides manfully along with a dozen bottles of beer in one hand and a supply of whisky and gin dangling from the other. He will have the laugh on us later, when we get to Soviet Russia, where beer costs 5s. 6d. a bottle: and is unbelievably bed at that.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.