Wanderlust

Ulan Baatar, Mongolia.

The last few days have been just one big silly adventure. We left Beijing Friday evening around 5:30 after making it successfully to the bus terminal with time to spare in order to grab some street food for a little dinner. We had bought some rice to go at our favorite little restaurant by our hostel and then (with Nicole’s help) bought lots of different foods on sticks that had been boiling in a vat of oil. There were noodles wrapped around the sticks, meat balls, tofu, and even some quail eggs. It was all pretty good, but some of it (especially the tofu) was ridiculously spicy! I thought my lips were going to burn off! Nicole didn’t realize that I’m still getting used to spicy food (but really doing better all of the time) and said later that the stick food was notoriously spicy and she wouldn’t have suggested if she would have known I was such a baby (my words, not hers). But it worked out, and we were soon on our bus which much to my delight was full of beds instead of seats! I think Peru and Ecuador need to take some tips from China and buy some bed-buses as it was much nicer to sleep in rather than the seats. But it also couldn’t fit as many people and we probably would have fallen out of them on all the windy roads in the mountains! But I was very excited about maybe getting a little sleep.

Shortly after we started off Nicole realized that she really had to use the toilet, but the toilet on the bus was broken and the door was locked! We were stuck in the Beijing traffic, still not out of the city after an hour on the road, and the bus driver refused to stop until we got farther out. I made lots of suggestions for her like hanging her butt out the window, but finally one suggestion won out… we took an empty soda bottle and cut off the top. Then we took one of the plastic bags from the bus (used to put your shoes in) and put it into the bag, and I held up a blanket around the back stairs while she peed in the bottle! It was awesome and pretty successful all things considered! When we stopped at a bathroom about an hour later we threw the bottle away and no one was the wiser.

The bus trip went pretty smoothly. We were taking the bus from Beijing to the Mongolian border. It was possible to take a train directly from Beijing to Ulan Baatar, but by taking a bus for the China portion and then a train in Mongolia it was much cheaper. I think on our way back Steve and I will probably just try to take the direct train since it was all very complicated with the border crossing, but since Nicole speaks so many languages it made things go much smoother. I guess it’ll depend on how much the direct train costs, though. We taught each other card games on the bus while it was still light out and then chatted a while before going to sleep. At some point in the night we stopped for another pit stop at what was apparently a giant bus stop along the way. The toilets were outside pits surrounded by concrete walls to separate boys from girls. And there was a restaurant where everyone was getting food. Steve and I got off the bus to use the toilet but didn’t wake up Nicole because we weren’t sure if we should or not. When we came back to the bus the door was locked and we couldn’t get back on. We looked around for Nicole for a while and then made our way back to what we thought was our bus (at this point there were dozens of buses all parking each other in and they all looked a lot alike). But then Nicole looked out her window and then came down to Steve’s bed which had a window that opened since it was on the first bunk. She was locked in the bus, but with a little help from Steve managed to climb out the window and was free again!

When we arrived in Erlyan (on the Chinese border) it was about 5 in the morning and we were all a bit dazed. Nicole negotiated for what we thought was our transport across the border, but it turned out that they just took us to a hotel where the border trucks would leave at around 9:30. He wanted us to pay him 30 yuan for the 5 block lift! It was ridiculous. Then the hotel wanted to charge us 10 yuan each to have a room to sleep in until 9:30, or 10 yuan total just to sit inside where it was warm. We ended up paying the man 20 yuan for the ride and the other 10 to sit inside. We all felt jipped and a little annoyed that the man had obviously purposefully misled Nicole who can speak Chinese (she is actually studying Chinese culture in Berlin and has been in China for one year taking Chinese lessons). We were happy for a warm place to sit down, and in the end it only cost about $5 total, but it was just annoying. We chatted and read and shared are various snacks that served as breakfast and waited for 9:30 when we would cross the border. The next exciting thing was that the hotel people wanted us to each pay 5 yuan for a little piece of paper that they said we needed to cross the border. They told us that if we didn’t have it we would be charged 50 yuan when we got there. This very much seemed like another scam since if we needed the paper to cross the border then why wouldn’t we be able to buy it at the border (or get it at the border for free, for that matter)? After a bunch of back and forth we decided to just pay it as 15 yuan was better than 150 yuan if they were telling the the truth and if they were lying than how sad to try to cheat people out of $2!

When we finally got in the truck we tried to explain to the driver (who spoke only Mongolian, not one of Nicole’s languages) that we would pay him half our fare now and the other half when we arrived. He eventually found someone who spoke Russian that Nicole could talk to and they got everything cleared up. The driver seemed either very amused or very impressed by us, but either way he agreed and everything went smoothly. We picked up one more passenger so the truck was full and the nice driver man (who had the most amazing face–all tan and wrinkled) started up the truck from under the hood and we were on our way. He stopped just before the border and took our little 5 yuan slips of paper and gave them to a police officer who was sitting in a car beside the road! So I guess we needed them after all! (As a side note, one of the many people who were trying to convince Nicole that we needed the papers while we were in the hotel actually had the balls, or the stupidity, to then make fun of Nicole in Chinese after she had just had a conversation with him in Chinese! How ridiculous! He basically said something along the lines of ‘I’m a stupid foreigner’ sort of mocking her, and so I said the same in English and we all laughed at him! It was so weird!)

The border crossing went fine. We did get stuck behind a large group of young kids who we had fun sort of teasing, trying to get in front of them or push them over the yellow line that the guard told us all to stay behind! It was fun and silly and the kids seemed to enjoy it. We arrived in Zamyn Üüd on the Mongolian side of the border and paid our nice driver. It was such a shock to be in Mongolia! It was so different from China in almost every possible way. Granted it was a border town, but it was just this tiny little place surrounded by grassland. We walked around and took photos and just sort of marveled at the desolation. One cute little detail was a lot of little girls’ pants were sort of bubbled at the bottom…. I’m not sure how to explain it. It was like a giant flare at the bottom (think ’70s bell bottoms) but then the bottom came back in to the ankle so that it was tight. Some of them were more fancy than others with several layers bunched up around the bubble. It was very cute, but I still haven’t gotten over my aversion of just taking photos of people. Especially when there’s no crowd to hide what I’m doing.

We ate some yummy food with lots of beef and noodles and mashed potatoes. It was delicious and helped me feel a little more energized since I was starting to wane a little as the day went on. We also found an internet cafe/children’s play place where we checked our mail and the exchange rate for Mongolian money ($1=1,150 MNT!). We also had a lot of fun playing around with the balls and other toys and making up little games to play to entertain ourselves since our train wasn’t until 5 pm. We played for about an hour until the owner told us (very politely) that the toys were for kids. How sad. But I felt bad that he had let us go that long (although it was fun to play). We ate some more food since we weren’t going to eat on the train and bought some bread, cheese, and pickles for snacks and breakfast for the morning. The train was scheduled to arrive in the Mongolian capital Ulan Baatar the next day around 9 in the morning. We shared our sleeping car on the train with a Mongolian man who spoke a little English and we chatted a little but he had a hard time understanding us. We did learn how to say hello and thank you in Mongolian which is nice. The train trip was pretty uneventful. It was nice to have a bathroom and another bed to sleep on, although I took the top bunk since Nicole was a little frightened of it and Steve was too tall for it. It was a little strange since there was no railing to keep you in and your head and feet faced the two sides of the train so when it stopped abruptly you’d roll a little. But since I don’t move when I sleep I was fine. Steve had me tie a scarf around myself and a strap on the wall just in case (which was cute).

The next morning we were in Ulan Baatar and had an epic search for a hostel for me and Steve. Nicole had already arranged a family home to stay in through Couchsurfing (an awesome website where you can stay for free in people’s homes or have travelers stay in your home…we really need to sign up for it), but they didn’t have enough room for us too.
After walking around and trying two places the owner of the second place called her friend who had a dorm room open for us. For $5 each a night it is a good deal and is in a family’s apartment which from the outside looks very plain and not so nice, but inside the apartment is really pretty and clean with an awesome shower and comfortable beds. It’s cold in Mongolia (but hot in the sun), but the hostel girl keeps the heat running so high that we were both hot last night and didn’t get to use our thick blankets.

Today we had a crazy day of planning a trip into the countryside. Yesterday Steve and Nicole checked out a couple of tour companies while I took some cold medicine and had a much needed nap. They found a nice place where instead of taking people on the normal tourist trail where you stay in tourist camps, they organize specialized trips where everything is included in the price so you don’t have to worry about anything along the way. The company is called Tseren Tours: Off the map adventures (email: info@tserentours.com) and is just around the corner from the State Department Store which seems like the general meeting place since it’s right on the main road in a central location. The capital is surprisingly small, but cute in its own way. There are some new buildings that are very modern looking but they’re surrounded by older, smaller buildings which just serve to emphasize how out of place they are. But getting back to our tour: we will be leaving at 8:30 tomorrow morning and we’ll be gone for 6 days and 5 nights (so no blog posts for a week, although I’m sure I’ll have a lot to catch up on when we get back!). We have a car and a Mongolian driver with an English guide/translator/cook. We will be going in a loop West of Ulan Baatar into the upper Golbi desert, then the grasslands, and finally the mountains. Along the way we’ll see sand dunes, waterfalls, a pretty lake, a monastery, and hot springs. We’ll stay half of the time in tents and the other half staying with nomadic Mongolian families in their traditional round tent-houses called gers. We’ll hopefully have the opportunity to ride on the two-humped camels and maybe also on horses. I can’t wait! It’s all been so fast since Nicole can only stay in Mongolia for a short time since she’ll also be going to Russia and her Russian visa runs out quickly. We tried to find other travelers to come with us since the price would go down $5/day each for every extra person we could find, but even after posting things online, in a local Western cafe, and literally asking white people on the streets, we couldn’t find anyone in time. But maybe it’s for the best. We know the three of us get along well and are interested in similar things, so this way we don’t get stuck with some duds for 6 days!

It’s going to be pretty cold where we’re going (especially the mountains), so we tried to go shopping for some warm things. The tour company will give us sleeping bags and traditional Mongolian coats (which are wind-proof shells and very pretty) for the trip and we all have hats, but we wanted gloves and maybe a sweater. But everything was so geared towards tourists (lots of cashmere, which is great but expensive) that we didn’t find much. Nicole and I bought pretty scarves/shawls that I’m really happy with. I wore it today instead of a coat since the temperature varies so much from sunny spots to shady spots and it was very warm and very pretty. We were going to go to the family’s house that Nicole is staying with for dinner tonight, but with so much to do before the morning we’ve decided to just grab some cheeseburgers at a funny fast food looking restaurant down the street. This weather makes me want greasy food, and I haven’t had a cheeseburger since Berkeley. I did have a delicious ham and cheese sandwich with a vanilla shake at a cafe this afternoon and that was wonderful. We’re having a lot of fun but also a hard time with the currency since everything we buy is in the thousands. The sandwich was 4,000, the milkshake 3,000. It’s only really like $3, but it’s hard to convert such big numbers in our heads! Especially for me since I’m all stuffy and confused from my cold (which is getting much better). For the trip we had to pay 1,343,160 (total for the three of us–$1,170)! One million! How fun! When Nicole had gotten her money out of an ATM and we had gotten half of our money out (Steve could only take out 400,000 and I realized my ATM card was in the hostel’s safe) we went back to the hostel to get my card and realized that we had all of these giant bills, so we did the only logical thing–we played with it! It was great fun and we all giggled like idiots (and took a bunch of photos). How funny it would have been if one of the other people staying in our room would have walked in!

So we’re off tomorrow for what I think will be a great adventure that will probably involve lots of photo opportunities. I’m very excited to see some of Mongolia, especially since it’s so unexpected! I didn’t know anything about Mongolia until yesterday and now I get to meat local people and travel around. What a fun trip! We are really having a marvelous time and are loving Asia. And the best part of staying in Mongolia is that we’ll completely miss the Chinese National Day! Yippee! So we don’t have to worry about getting stuck somewhere without a train out or trying to book a hostel with all the people traveling.

Nicole, Steve, and Gina playing with money! Yes, those bills are in 20,000 and 10,000 denominations!

Tags: Mongolia, Mongolia, Ulan Baatar

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 5:12 am and is filed under Mongolia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.