For the last few days, I've been making mental lists about the highs and lows of this trip now that I'm three weeks and five countries into the journey. Since my last post, I spent two days in Tallin and have now been in Riga for 24 hours. Overall, there have a been a few exciting moments, a few pleasant surprises, a few setbacks, and more than a few irritations. Just like any travel experience, it's been filled with the unexpected.

Top 5 Unexpected Delights and Oddities
1. Discovering a thriving beach culture in the middle of the mountains at the alpine lake resort at Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan
2. Walking the windswept cliffs in absolute solitude at the old Suomenlinna sea fortress in Helsinki
3. Cheesy American soaps and movies, most notably the infamous Showgirls, dubbed into Russian by just one male deep-voiced actor speaking over the top of all the dialogue on TV (experienced in Russia, Estonia and Latvia)
4. Sampling wild boar with wild berry jam and saffron cake as well as caramelised almonds at an authentically-styled medieval restaurant in Tallinn
5. Finding myself in a delightful and yet reasonably priced world-class boutique hotel in the heart of Old Riga

Top 5 Irritations
1. Being accosted by gypsy children in St Petersburg and having my Fuji instant camera and my (very cute Shanghai-bought) business card holder stolen
2. Numerous Russian men with chronic personal hygiene problems: haven't they heard of soap or cologne?
3. Chronically disparate pricing for Russians and foreigners in St Petersburg and having to pay US$3-5 per camera to take photos inside museums
4. Rude, abrupt and unpleasant service in restaurants, ticket booths, train stations, and hotels in Russia
5. Having cold weather (10 degree C highs) and rain trail me for the past two weeks since arriving in St Petersburg...and not having enough winter clothes or dry shoes to cope with the daily rain

Top 5 Survival Tools
1. My 30GB iPod
2. In Your Pocket travel guides to Eastern Europe
3. Oanda traveller foreign currency cheat sheets
4. Tokyu Hands, a one-stop shop for all travelling needs
5. Instant photo publishing on the road: Toshiba Portege mini laptop, iPassConnect for worldwide internet roaming, Canon G5 PowerShot, and Adobe Photoshop

Since the weather in Helsinki was mostly rainy and overcast while I was there, the first of my next two Typepad albums focuses on the vividly colourful macro views of boats in the downtown area (conveniently hiding the grey and unappealing skies from the camera lens). Once the weather lifted, I took the opportunity to document one of Helsinki's most interesting historic destinations, the Suomenlinna sea fortress, a UNESCO cultural heritage site dating back hundreds of years when Finland needed to defend itself from seafaring invaders.

Finally today, if you've read some of the comments attached to my recent posts, you would have seen that I have decided to change my itinerary. Moscow will now be only a transit stop on my way back to Tokyo, and I will be spending the last six days of my trip in Stockholm instead. Bring on the good Scandinavian design!

I may have had bad luck in St Petersburg, but now that I'm in Helsinki, things are starting to look up. In fact, my timing couldn't have been more perfect. After a short, comfortable flight on Finnair on Saturday, I arrived in Helsinki to discover that the Leningrad Cowboys, Finland's most famous musical export, was performing for just one night together with the Red Army Choir, and were playing a free live outdoor concert, the Global Balalaika Show, for the Helsinki Festival.

That night, two friends and I joined 100,000 other concert-goers, one-sixth of the population of the entire city, for the most surreal, bemusing and enjoyable live show that I have seen in many years. Onstage, the long-coiffed, pointy-shoed Cowboys were accompanied by more than 140 guest performers including Angelique Kidjo, Isaac Hayes and numerous scantily-clad samba dancers, Russian cossack dancers, stilt walkers, and ostrich feather-adorned performers for an uplifting set of familiar tunes (can you imagine Leningrad Cowboys performing The Damned's Eloise?...neither could I, but it worked!) and high camp entertainment.

Unfortunately I was too far from the main stage to see (or photograph) any details, but I was able to watch the show on the large video screens on either side. I attempted to capture the people around me who were also enjoying the show, with less than ideal results in this latest Typepad gallery, but you still get the sense of a vastly colourful performance, set in a beautiful historic public square with impressive old European civic architecture.

Today's second gallery concludes my photos from St Petersburg and contains several views of the breathtaking Church of Spilled Blood. Finally, my Mirror Project submission from St Petersburg is now online. With palaces overflowing with sumptuous baroque gilded interiors and hundreds of mirrors, it was almost impossible to choose the best one for a self-portrait. This image, believe it or not, is from one of the more restrained rooms, the Ball Room, at Tsarskoe Selo (Catherine the Great's country retreat).

Later today I fly to Helsinki, and I'm really looking forward to the change in atmosphere. St Petersburg has been a hard city for me--little English spoken, different prices for foreigners, queuing for everything, poor service, excessive rudeness, noisy Europop dance music blaring--but it does have two very special features. The palaces are second to none and the museums contain some of the world's very best fine art collections. I have uploaded two new Typepad photo albums highlighting these two aspects: the museum series contains photos shot at the Hermitage and Winter Palace and at the Russian Museum, while the palace series has images of Peterhof, Peter the Great's seaside palace, and Tsarskoe Selo, Catherine the Great's country retreat.

While every day here has been both challenging and interesting, Tuesday is a day I would rather forget. I should have seen it coming. Carrying a large camera bag with my entire photo kit of multiple lenses and cameras meant that I couldn't help but attract unwanted attention from those less than savoury types who viewed me as an instant moneymaker for them. As I was boarding a trolleybus to travel up Nevskiy Prospekt, the main street, I felt a swarm of hands on me yanking me off the bus and restraining me while their octopus hands tried to get into my bags. I managed to protect all of my equipment except one: they made off with my Fujifilm instant camera. And just who was I the unlikely victim of? Fifteen gypsy children who roam Nevskiy Prospekt eyeing their next target to accost. I had been warned to avoid them if they approached (and had a previous run-in with them two days earlier when they appeared out of nowhere), but nothing could prepare me for their outright aggression when they surrounded me at the steps of the bus, holding me so I couldn't board, and blocking me so I couldn't get away. At least the camera wasn't valuable...just irreplaceable until I return to Japan next month.

While I've been in St Petersburg since Saturday, I've had major internet connectivity problems due to roaming software database authentication errors and so I haven't been able to upload anything from my computer all of this week. Now that an alternative account has been arranged, I have added the last two galleries of photos shot during my stay in Kyrgyzstan.

The Akun Resort album
contains images from the Soviet-style resort on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul. I use the term 'resort' loosely as the quality of hotel I stayed in bordered on 1 to 2 star, the facilities were primitive (and public toilets absolutely putrid), and the entire complex was filled with interestingly rundown and abandoned structures. Nevertheless, the stay was a very interesting, enjoyable, and visually memorable one.

The second gallery contains just a small selection of images shot in and around Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, and from the outskirts of the Issyk-Kul bioreserve. The city itself is very poverty-stricken with extremely limited infrastructural development and is filled with communist architecture and monuments. Nevertheless, it is bustling with energy and a stark contrast to industrialised Russian cities like St Petersburg and Moscow.

Following the conclusion of my work commitments, I left Lake Issyk-Kul yesterday for a 4-hour bus trip to the country's capital city, Bishkek. Lots of unexpected stops, thanks to vast numbers of cows, geese, horses, donkeys and sheep crossing the road at numerous intervals, as well as a back tyre blow-out. Tonight's my last night in Kyrgyzstan before I catch a 5am flight tomorrow to Moscow and then onto St Petersburg later in the morning. I'm still sorting the digital photos I've shot here, but have just uploaded another photo album to Typepad. Today the images are of Lake Issyk-Kul, a stunningly beautiful salty lake with beaches surrounded by snow-capped mountain ranges on all sides, under crisp clear blue skies and truly magical light.

I found a moment to submit a new entry to the Mirror Project, taken during an afternoon cruise on the lake. Much vodka was drunk, fish eaten, and general merriment was had by all.

During an afternoon of craft market scouring, I came across a stall selling old Soviet memorabilia and vintage cameras. How could I resist when I came across a very reasonably priced Lomo Lubitel 166B camera? It was an absolute steal, so this little beauty will be continuing its travels with me across Eastern Europe before being put to use in Tokyo.

For my regular readers who visit this site to check out my online photography discoveries and links, I'm taking a month-long break from webtrawling while I travel, and will be posting my own photography instead. Please check back again from the middle of next month for regular esthet blogging.

The first of my travel photography galleries are now online in my Typepad photo album. It has been a little troublesome to upload content from Kyrgyzstan as connection speeds are terminally slow here. This first album contains a small selection of images of my Moscow stopover a few days ago. I'm continuing to prepare more galleries from Lake Issyk-Kul, the second highest alpine lake in the world, so I will post more links when I have a little more time after the end of this workshop (and hopefully a faster connection) soon!

Thirty-six hours after leaving my apartment in Tokyo, I'm now at Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan on mission for my job. The last week or so has been a mad dash to make the necessary preparations to visit eight cities in six countries in just over a month, so you've probably noticed that I haven't been blogging as often.

Before I left Tokyo, I was mid-way through setting up a mini travel photo site to allow me to post digital images while I'm away. Once I'm done tweaking the presentation over the next few days, I'll post the link so you can follow my travels, if you're interested.

The journey getting here was epic: limousine bus departure from Shibuya in the middle of one of the biggest typhoons ever to hit Tokyo, a 10 hour flight to Moscow, transit for 4 hours, a 4 hour flight back towards Tokyo to Bishkek landing at 3:30am their time, followed by another 3 hour wait while one of our party was missing in action, then a 4 hour bus road to the lake. Is the destination or the journey getting there the best part of travelling? Either way, I'm exhausted!

Some random thoughts from the journey: horizontal rain at 120km/h, can't get real milk with my coffee (again!), middle-aged Russian woman in the tightest pants I have ever seen, surly flight attendants, beef or chicken?, shabby cattle class, barking immigration officials, flesh flesh flesh everywhere, Russian sausages, damn my bags are heavy, "sir, don't steal that glass", non-locking toilet doors, "don't worry, the x-ray's safe for ALL film" (read: put it through and don't argue), puking next-door-neighbour, "ma'am, do you speak Russian...come with us...you don't have the right visa" (I did), rolling verdant hills, turkeys and donkeys, stench-filled toilet pit, gushing river, eating smoked fish and unleavened bread with fingers, swollen ankles and sore muscles, salty alpine lake with lobster-red overweight sunbathers, my laptop won't connect to the internet(!), 48 hours mostly awake...I need to sleep!

On Saturday, I leave here to continue my travels for another four weeks in Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and returning to Japan on 11 September. The rest of my trip will be purely devoted to photography, so I'm really looking forward to the visual discoveries that are about to cross my path.

You may have already chanced upon the 26 Things Photographic Scavenger Hunt that took place worldwide throughout July. Photobloggers and photographers are now starting to submit their entries, and there are some really great submissions to be found. My personal highlight is Conscientious' selection. Other interesting entries include Sweet Surprise, thinkless, Perpetuality, razorberries, and Japan's own mediatinker and frangipani. Have any of you participated in 26 Things?

I have recently come across a number of helpful photography-related FAQs; some basic and some a little more technical.

Digital photography: why digital SLRs don't allow live preview, minimising shutter lag, and advantages of RAW mode over tiff (via 990000).

Electronic flash: high-speed and second curtain synchronization and flash troubleshooting.

Canon EOS Lenses: explaining Canon teleconverters and weighing up third-party lenses. In this more general lens FAQ, it explains how you can tell if a lens has vignetting, or if a filter is causing vignetting.

Unofficial Nikon D1 FAQ (pdf file): this contains a collection of more than 300 Frequently Asked Questions about this professional digital SLR camera from the D1scussion list.

Infrared photography: selecting infrared films and cameras. Suprisingly, digital cameras CAN do colour infra-red photography.

Callibrating your monitor and printer and gamma levels.

Explaining the Zone System for making good exposures: this answers the question as to why serious photographers still use negatives.

At last...the answer to the problem of chromatic aberration (or purple fringing) seen in the Canon G5 PowerShot digital camera.

Travel photography and the law: when you do and don't need permission.

Copyright and photography: ASMP's Copyright Guide for Photographers (pdf file) and an intellectual property law primer for multimedia developers (covering photography).

Finally, two great links: a comprehensive guide to the fully digital workflow and a lengthy selection of tips on digital dog, including colour management, achieving the best possible scans from your scanner, and calibrating your digital camera (pdf files).