All posts by pingeandwang

Pinge: Palinka – a traditional fruit brandy in the countries of the Carpathian Basin, invented in the Middle Age. Our tipple of “choice” during the Glastonbury adventure. Wang: sausage, penis Please note this is a new blog and we are still transferring stuff over from the Facebook page so please bear with us during this harrowing time. Erstwhile drinking buddies, Susan and Jill cemented their friendship and discovered their mutual thirst for adventures during that fateful summer of 2009, when both girls had returned, now penniless, from their respective trips travelling the world to the height of Britain’s recession. Not a job in sight and not a penny to our names, we survived on the charity of family and friends. It was a strange time, partially hideously depressing and partially the funniest, most relaxed summer we ever had. It is a time, however, that we will always reflect upon fondly, as following one of our charity funded drinking sessions, we embarked upon the now infamous “Hitch-hiking to Glastonbury on not 1p” Adventure and realised that we made the best travelling companions – if we can get through THAT and still be friends (indeed it made us closer – whatever the girl equivalent of a bromance is – a ho-mance?) we can just about take on anything.
Micro Travelling, Stans, Travel

Peter Powell’s definitely going to come now! Successful Stan a plan in the can ready to gan.

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You all may be thinking that it’s been a bit quiet on the Pinge and Wang front recently (we admit it and we’re sorry – we’re never going to get on Ellen at this rate with this lack of commitment to our social media outlets and with our knees at our time of life!!!) but behind the scenes it has been a hive of activity, working away to finalise the itinerary for this year’s amazing trip: The Stannering. We’ve come up against a lot of obstacles – closed borders, routes, visas etc… It’s been a logistical nightmare, but now we are basking in the warm glow of having proposed another fabulous trajectory that would make Peter Powell proud!

We’ve also had no end of bother with bureaucracy, involving Jill having to get a new passport (because Uzbekistan refused her visa with the scruffy, beef sauce covered, guilty-stamped one that has been with us on all our previous adventures), Susan having to take a day trip to Northern Ireland to buy return UK postage for her Uzbek and Tajikstan visas (but getting a fun evening in dubious bars in Newry being fought over by old men out of it) and being concerned about Turkmenistan’s fear of good for nothing Latvians.

Oh yes! We forgot to tell you! We have a companion for the first (and maybe second) leg of this trip – our lovely friend Vita will be joining us as we rock the shit out of Turkmenistan! You know that usually we’re partners in crime and don’t want anyone else along for the ride (and no one else could put up with us to be honest), but this year is kind of special as it’s Susan’s 40th birthday! She had wanted to spend it on the moon, but budget tourist space flights aren’t a thing quite yet so she’s settled for camping at the Gates of Hell in Turkmenistan as the next best thing (“Turkmenistan – the next best thing to the moon” – Turkmen Tourist Board, you can use that if you like!) and invited a few close friends along for that leg of the trip. BUT, our Turkmen tour organiser (you can’t get a visa without an organised tour – booo) has warned us that it is unlikely that Vita will be issued a visa as Turkmenistan think that “people from all ex-soviet countries are trouble makers”! The cheek! Of course, Vita is no trouble maker and we’re hoping that he’s talking bollocks (the Turkmen Embassy in London seemed to think when we asked!) and that the consul will be won over by her very angelic-looking visa photos!

So the progress report for the day is so far we have: finished the trajectory, booked the tour in Turkmenistan, booked the Almaty- Yerevan flights and applied for Uzbekistan visas (Jill for the 2nd time!). Shit’s starting to get reeeeeal!!!

Coming soon – the moment you have all been waiting for… OUR 2015 ROUTE MAP!!!!

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Whammy Wang on a Stan a Plan!

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Screw you Azerbaijan – you bricked us in us for so long but we have tamed you like the Berlin wall! You may not know we are there but we will be coming at you up your wrong un! Also as an added bonus once we got going with the planning after that once seemingly insurmountable hurdle – mother fupping helicopter to the Georgian version of Albanian Thethi AKA Skyrim!! You see, all it takes it the 2 girls to put their heads together inside their cup for one evening and we shall overcome!

Subpoena

Pinge and Wang – Setting Trends as well as Hearts and Loins on Fire since 2009

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Subpoena to this article for copying our love of old men! The hipsters will be all over that shit now and we’ll have to start talking to middle aged men! See our recent post to find out exactly why you too should become an old man aficionado.

Micro Travelling, Travel

Ellen here we come!!

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In our mission to become internet superstars, give up our day jobs and instead get paid to go to dubious places and get into scrapes with hilarity ensuing (the things we do for your reading pleasure!), we thought we would make a little inspirational graphic to remind ourselves of our mission statement and core values, culminating in the heady heights of getting onto The Ellen DeGeneres Show (thanks to our social media consultant Antonine for getting us on track). Please see below, the REAL Maslow hierarchy of needs.

RealMaslow

Travel, Whitterings, Witterings

All Countries for Old Men (or “Why Talking to The Elderly Locals is The Best Way to Get to Know a Place)

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As you no doubt know, one of our favourite travel activities is finding grotty little dive bars in which to talk the toot to drunk old men. The grotty dive bars thing has long been a tradition (as we would rather stay away from the touristy places and get to know some of the locals), and we didn’t really give much thought to the old men part until we were in Estonia earlier this year, reading through the “In Your Pocket” guide to Tallinn and noticed “Vaali Bar”, a “small and stinky local institution” promising “cheap drinks and unusual elderly regulars” and thought that sounded right up our street (declaring “I love talking shit with old men!”, “I love talking shit to old men too!!!!”) and our great night there with our new friend Aaaaaaaarrrrrrnie, that we decided that we should make more of a conscious effort to meet more old men and make it part of our mission statement and core values.

Looking back, we’ve had some of our best craic with old men! Drinking beers in a record shop in Tulum (Mexico), driving around the castles of Transylvania (with beers, obviously)…and our favourite occasion when, after being warned that the men in northern Albania were dangerous and would kidnap us, we happened upon a hut halfway up a mountain near Thethi where the old mountain men within greeted us warmly, offered us beers and we had a fabulous evening drinking, playing dominoes and chatting in broken English/Albanian – these are some of our greatest old men times! So, we thought we’d put together a list of reasons why old men are the best.

To the List!!!

Stans

Yablykangly to Urgench but no official Googlewhack.

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Trajectory proposing for Pinge and Wang 2015 – The Stanering and are having a hoot with the odd place names. And can you believe that “Yablykangly Urgench” isn’t an official Googlewhack as the place names aren’t iin their dictionary? Bad show Googlewhack!

Addition: Now we’ve blogged this it won’t be a googlewhack anymore anyway, and we forgot to take a shot of the evidence on screen before we posted!

Eastern Europe, Micro Travelling, Travel

We love Bellendarus, the feeling deep inside! We live lamentation, aren’t you jealarus? Go Kazakhstan at the Ice Hockey World Championships: Minsk, Belarus.

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If you are a keen follower of our adventures, you will recall that in our Eastern Eastern Europe Rewangering this year, we really wanted to go to Belarus but you needed complicated, expensive visas to get in. However in May Belarus held the Ice Hockey World Championships, and anyone with a ticket for one of the matches could get into the country without the need of a visa, hence we became overnight fans of the sport and got 2 tickets!

In a complex bit of logisticing, Jill’s flight to Dublin was first thing on the Thursday morning then we had a flight to Oslo at 5pm so we decided to go out and meet Aaron and Ger for some lunch during their break. We had a nice catch up, wine and some mussels at a nice restaurant with a terrace before it was time to taxi to the airport. As an added bonus, Susan had a voucher for Uber so we utilised that to get a luxury car and chauffeur like real ladies. We were met at the bus station in Oslo by Christopher (from Norway – another one of the Amsterdam/Copenhagen gang) and his Australian girlfriend Kirsty and had a few beers in the bar at the station before Christopher proposed that since Jill had never been to Oslo and didn’t have time to see it all, we should go up to the panoramic bar at the top of the Radisson hotel (which was conveniently just across the road) and sit in the window with the good view and they would give an aerial tour of the city. So we did that which was lovely (although we daren’t even think how much the beers we had in there cost, as it’s around £8 for a pint in a normal bar in Oslo! Christopher and Kirsty got them though, since it was their idea to go there and they are used to those prices and less likely to die of a heart attack than us!) and then met Erland, another good friend of Susan’s, and an ‘orrid unt of a man, for some dinner.  It was about 1am by the time we got back to Howie’s (Susan’s torrid gay affair, whose house we were staying at and Erland’s twin brother – he was actually not there at the time as he was up visiting his parents in Trondheim but he and his husband Matthew had said we could stay there and Erland let us in) so we settled down to a nice relaxing two hours of sleep before we had to get the bus to the airport at 3. This was not very much fun as you can imagine – our flight to Vilnius wasn’t until 6.30am but the latest bus that would get us to the airport on time was the 3 o’clock one! So yes, it was very grim but we managed to make it and had a bit more sleep on seats at the airport before the flight boarded.

Put the rest of this in your face

Micro Travelling, Travel

Fighting off the not-dubious-in-the-right-way dubious old men in tedious tourist hell – Cyprus

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For your delectation – the final part of our Rewangering adventure, we last left you in the airport in Bucharest, en route to Cyprus. Enjoy and please congratulate us on actually writing up a full trip for the first time ever!:

We should probably explain that we found dirt cheap (about €20) flights from Bucharest to Larnaca in Cyprus, so as the route back via Bulgaria was at really inconvenient times we’d decided that a couple of days relaxing in the sun on a beach would be just what we needed after all the dashing about over the last couple of weeks, and would be a kind of holiday within a holiday to recharge our batteries and cheer us up when the trip was coming to an end and we would be very depressed about having to return home and go back to work.

We landed in Larnica after dark, and after asking around and being told that the next bus into town wasn’t for another half an hour Susan went off in search of some boozes while Jill had a cigarette outside. She returned looking very put out. “Jill – we’re not in Eastern Europe any more”. A can of cider and a packet of smoked almonds had just cost Susan 8 Euros! Damn you Cyprus! We wandered around trying to find another bus, as we couldn’t be bothered to wait (and probably pay the zillion euros) to get the tourist Airport Coach, and it looked like there was a bus stop across the road. We found a little minibus headed into town that was only €2 each.

As is now typical for us, we overshot the town centre in the bus (well you never know where the actual “town centre” is unless someone tells you! Even if it looks a bit town centre-ish it might not be!) and ended up at the depot, in the middle of an industrial estate. Put the rest of this in your face

Eastern Europe, Micro Travelling, Travel

Revenge of the Pinge!! – Bucharest, Romania

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On arriving in Bucharest, we decided to stop for a beer at the bar in the train station to get our bearings and decide where we were going to stay that night. The nice girl at the Rolling Stone in Brasov had given us a handful of fliers for hostels in Bucharest, so we got out Susan’s phone and with the aid of our faithful companion Google Maps we checked their locations and tried to find the one that was nearest. We stayed there for a couple more beers as we were having some good craic, enjoying a nonsensical phone call with Joe and were enjoying taking the weight off our feet after our busy day exploring Transylvanian castles. After a while, the barman came over with a tray of two glasses of clear liquor – “For you! On the house! It is traditional Romanian drink!”. Oh god…
“Is it…is it PALINKA?”
“Yes!”
We thanked him, wetting ourselves laughing that we actually managed to get some pinge on this years Pinge and Wang, and Jill downed hers (having developed a masochistic fondness for the stuff while in Budapest for the Palinka and Sausage Festival the previous year…although she does warn that drinking too much of it results in doing stupid things like eating a salad you find in a bag on the street) whilst Susan grimaced and tried to force hers down without being sick immediately afterwards. She managed eventually, after many protests of “No! NO! I can’t do it!” every time the glass got near her mouth and eventually Mandible had to turn up to finish it.
Put the rest of this in your face

Eastern Europe, Micro Travelling, Travel

Castles, Karaoke and Cool Car Drivers – Welcome to Romania!

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After a week of ex Soviet grimness our eyes get a real treat in stunning Brasov, Bran, Sinaia and Bucharest. As usual click on the image below to view the fully pimped out Facebook album.

RomaniaGallery