Bucharest, Romania

Bob says: Bucharest is still very much recovering from its bloody past. Evidence of the revolution and Nicolae Ceausescu's communist dictatorship is everywhere. The 3rd picture shows the vast palace of parliment constructed towards the end of Ceausescu's evil reign. Ceausescu's vision was to turn Bucharest into a Paris of eastern Europe that included its own arc de triumph and champs ellysee. In order to finance this, the lunitic put his own people on rations and began exporting most of Romania's food. Unfortunately for Bucharest he got as far as levelling one sixth of the city including a lot of historic buildings, laid the road for the champs and built a mini arc at the end of it. This man was clearly a lune of the highest order, which may go some way to explaining his fascination with the french.
Ruth says: Whilst in Bucharest we had a visit to the Chinese Embassy hoping to obtain our visa. However, when we handed in our application forms we were told that we would not be issued with a visa without flight receipts. When we informed them that we were driving we discovered that we needed permits for all the different Chinese provinces. We investigated this further and also found out that we would need a so-called guide to drive with us the whole time. This amazingly applies to all foreign vehicles. The expense and time involved in this process was just not available to us, so we had to come up with a plan B!
Bob says:You may be wondering why we didn't check this out beforehand, but the information on this is not as readily available as you might think. Plus, if we'd crossed every t and dotted every i before we'd set off then we might still be home.