Thursday, November 20, 2008

The rest of our trip in Mongolia, a month later.

So I wrote this, after nobody cares anymore. Mongolia? Was I there? Oh yeah, I was. And I rode a camel:


So in Ulan Bataar there was plenty to do. We went to a museum of Buddhist art, which is beautiful and sometimes terrifying, especially when they wanted to depict a wrathful demon, and the whole painting looks like a bad acid trip. We also visited the largest temple in Mongolia, which was amazing, and although I am not a Buddhist a lot of my Japanese relatives are, and it made me want to learn more about it. But here they are Tibetan Buddhists, which is pretty different from the other branches, I think.
It was nice in the hostel to speak English with people who are not Russians. Especially with the brits, I don’t know why, but they are always 100x wittier than Americans are. In the morning we started our tour, which was five days long. Our guide was a very normal Mongol girl Dogie, who spoke english perhaps worse than I speak Russian, although her vocabulary was good. She always said «did you full?» and «we wake up at the nine hour» so I think I could be a Russian guide. Maybe.
I finally got to ride a camel, which is a life-changing experience. Camels are terrifying, no, horrifying creatures. They are kept in check by a wooden plug that is placed in their nose so that the slightest pressure is painful to them so they have to yield, and at first I thought this was inhumane, but later on I was glad, because my camel was pretty angry and probably would have bucked me and bit my face off if he had the chance. But not really. Basically we just sat between their two humps and looked at the gorgeous scenery around us. They are completely unnatural animals: their necks are freakishly long, their legs are all knobbly, and they make dinosaur sounds. But it was an experience.
I think it is known that I hate horses, but now I have to say that I only hate non-Mongolian horses. They are basically ponies, but we're not supposed to call them that, and I had a blast riding them. This time it was for a few hours and we weren't all together, so we had to control our own horses. Our guide scared us when she said: «don't take pictures on the horse, don't take off the coat on the horse, or he will throw you off. And, please don't try to kiss the horse. Last summer, a girl from Ireland kissed her horse and he bit her nose very badly.» So I didn't try to kiss my horse.
I knew from the start that I was going to get the white horse, and I was right. At the beginning he wanted to return to his horse friends, so he constantly went to the right. I thought I was a bad horse-driver, and I was ashamed. He also loved to walk extremely slowly, ignoring my exhulations of «chu!» (that was what we were supposed to say) until he got far enough behind and on his own will decided to trot up to the last horse ahead of us, and then promptly started to walk extremely slowly again. However, after we stopped the first time to look at a waterfall, he was a completely different horse. At this point I had already chose the name Yan-Yan for him, because it was his name, I think. He still liked to be a little separate from the other horses, to the right of course, but now he listened to me and we gaily trotted across the great plains of Central Mongolia. We stopped at a second waterfall, which was much more impressive: an icy river poured down into a crater-shaped depression through an ice-waterfall. It was really neat. But I was excited to get back on Yan-Yan, and prove to everybody that he was the best horse. He might have been the smallest as well, and I was the tallest. Sitting on him, I think my torso was almost taller than he was. But not quite. It was a little uncomfortable when he trotted, but the land around us was golden with little strips of white snow, and the sky was enormous and dark blue, and I thought I could ride a horse across all of Mongolia. But then it got more uncomfortable, because Yan-Yan loved to trot sort of quickly. At the end we went out for a little jaunt to make our horses gallop, and it was fun but a little scary, because you really have to balance right.
We slept all 5 nights in yurts, which have five beds, a little table, and a central stove that either uses cow dung or wood. Yurts are great for nomads, but I didn't really love the eye-burning lightbulb, or the plastic kindergarten seats that Mongolian used. And my least favorite part was the yurt heating system: the local family put about 50 logs into the stove so at bedtime it is 95 degrees, and then we woke up 4 hours later and it was 25.
Another highlight was a visit to an old temple that was pagoda-style, and I really felt that I was in Asia, and while we were visiting a dust storm blew up, which was unpleasant for my eyes but created a beautiful light over the temple walls.
When we got back to Ulan-Ude I went to a huge market and bought a Russian fur hat for $200, which is of course a lot, but it was made out of real mink fur and it will come in handy when it is -30 here. I hope I didn't offend anybody. It's a sweet hat. We also ate… Cuban food! In Mongolia! And the chef was Belorussian. What a strange country.
In general, Mongolia has shed a lot of the Russian influence from the past 70 years. I felt like I was in a dirty Korean town, not Siberia or Kazhakstan. There were some strange things on the streets: people had home telephones that somehow worked without wires, and people could pay for one phone call or one cigarrette, but the strangest thing I saw was a lady sitting on the sidewalk with a scale in front of her. I had to ask the hostel owner, but it turns out that people will pay her to see how much they weigh, even in winter clothing.
In the end, we were a little sad to leave Mongolia, because a) except for the border, the people were more calm and friendlier, b) it was a lot more exotic that Irkutsk, c) there was more things to do in Ulan-Bataar than in Irkutsk, and d) no more speaking English. The second border crossing went swimmingly, the customs agents were not even angry at us! We took a bus to Ulan-Ude, capital of the Buryat' Republic on the other side of lake Baikal, and all trains to Irkutsk were full so we had to stay in the train station hotel, which was surprisingly nice, except for the loudspeakers announcing the arrivals and departures. The next day we had time to see the main attraction of Ulan-Ude: a gigantic head of Lenin. A gigantic Lenin head. It is probably 35 feet tall. It is odd—you are walking along, admiring the Soviet architechture, and then—oh. It's a giant head of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Wow.
Our train home started in Beijing and was headed to Moscow, and so I spent 7 very interesting hours in the company of Pasha, who made me shake hands and hug various young Chinese people who passed through our wagon in the name of Eternal Russko-Sino-American friendship. Then I joined Kevin in his compartment with Pasha and drank beers with four young men that looked exactly like the people that intimidate the heck out of me at the bus stop but they turned out to be good people. Even the one with tattoos all over his hand, which meant that he had been in jail. I even was able to discuss world politics with them, but when they began arguing amongst each other about the price of Hummer-3's, I couldn't follow. And then we got home, back to our beloved Irkutsk.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Chingis Khan energy drink

So we went to Mongolia last week. I think I should say that our first 18 hours in Mongolia were awful, and the rest were really fun.

Most people just take a Russian train straight to Ulaan Bataar, the capital, but there were only 1st class trains on the day we wanted to leave so we decided to take the train to the border and see what we could do there. We heard that there were cars and stuff that would take us to a Mongolian border town, so I wasn't too worried.

The train ride was fine, we left at night and arrived around 1:00 at the border town of Naushki. On the trip, a train policeman asked us if we were Americans, and we kept trying to give him our documents because we didn't understand him but he said that he didn't need them. "You are Americans?" "Yes." "And you are going to Naushki?" "Yes." "And then on to Mongolia?" "Yes." "I see. Then blah blah something something something, okay?"

We didn't understand him, so we said yes and tried to give him our documents. "I don't want your documents!" He said, and walked away. Later I realized that he probably gave us some valuable advice on how to cross the border, like probably not to do what we were about to do. Oh well.

We got off the train and immediately found a person who would take us to the border town of Sukhbataar in Mongolia for 600 rubles per car. Great! Except we just drove 25km to the actual border, and then we had to change cars. And still pay him. So at the border there was bunch of trucks and little beat up cars and Mongolians yelling at us to get in their car. Kevin and Patrick were in another little van because they got there about a minute earlier, and I was about to get in with them when the other three of us got into a beat up little white car. It was one of those decisions that you know is completely wrong, and yet you still do it anyway. I immediately felt pretty uncomfortable, what with all the shouting and pointing in Mongolian, the fact that the car had only 0 doors that were working perfectly, and that our driver was drunk, farted next to our window, and did not speak english and about 4 words of Russian. Before we got in I asked how much and his friend said 200 rubles. "To Sukhbataar?" I said. "Yes."

So the Russians opened the border gate and to my delight our car was pushed into the zone. Our driver asked me to write his own damn name on a customs form, which I did, but when he started telling me to write some numbers down and I didn't understand what he was saying at all I suddenly realized how stupid this all was and said in Russian "no! No! I don't understand! Where Is Your Friend, Who Speaks Russian?" It went on like this for a while, with him pushing the car from station to station, and in the car it was revealed to me that the car was not going to Sukhbataar (probably because it did not run) and now cost 300 rubles. At the Mongolian passport zone the border guard looked at my passport and asked me if I was an Indian when he saw that I was from Alaska. In english.

So Chris and I decided that we weren't going to pay him, seeing as how he didn't do anything close to what we agreed on. We decided, in our naive American certainty, that we were going to give him 30 rubles, because he did take us across the border. In Mongolia proper there was a van that promised to take us to Sukhbataar for 100 rubles each. We tried to give our guy his 30 rubles, and he responded by grunting angrily and grabbing Chris's bag. Chris held on to it, and we tried to explain that he didn't do what he promised. I then looked around and with a sinking feeling looked at the hard, unsympathetic faces of the 9 other Mongolian men around us, including the border guard who thought I was an eskimo. Everything became clear to me: give him the 300 rubles. Except then we found out that it was 300 each, and we protested a bit more, but there was really nothing we could do, so I gave him 1000. He didn't have change, of course, but that didn't matter. I just made sure to shake his hand so that he wouldn't get the idea to ask for any more money.
At this point I must say that I was not to hot on Mongolians in general, and when our last driver told us that he had to stop at his house to tell his wife, I pictured a bunch of baseball bat-wielding Mongols waiting for us, and was extremely unsettled. It turns out that he really just told his wife that he was going to take us there, and he turned out to be a very nice guy who spoke a little Russian. "Your driver, taxi driver, bad man." he said. "Very drunk."
Its surprising how quickly I went from being a generally trusting guy to a guy who hated non-American Asians to a normal trusting guy again.
So we finally got to Sukhbataar, and all we had to do now was buy a train ticket to Ulaan Bataar. Except the ticket office was closed. So we waited in the small station hall for about 7 hours. At the start of the last hour about a million people flooded in and the ticket sellers came opened up shop. In Mongolian trains there are basically two classes: hard and soft. Soft means slightly softer beds and a guaranteed spot. They sell unlimited hard tickets, so we obviously wanted soft ones. They were twice as expensive, but when choosing between a 4 dollar ticket and an 8 dollar ticket, it wasn't too difficult.
Except:
They were out of soft tickets. So we were just given a wagon, #3, and we gathered in a big clump around it. As soon as the wagon attendant showed her face by the door, people started fighting to get on. Not like Americans fight to leave a baseball game, or even like Russians fight to get a spot on a minibus, but like a big battle. Probably because of our size advantage, Patrick managed to get the last compartment on the wagon, which meant that we didn't have to watch our bags as we could put them under our seats. Unfortunately, this was a night train and we tried to sleep sitting upright while dozens of Mongolians talked loudly and banged the door as they went to smoke. Every time I woke up, which was a lot, there were more and more Mongols on the train, sleeping on luggage racks and such. It wasn't nearly as bad as Indian trains, though, I bet.
When we arrived in the capital at 6:40am it was really ______ cold, because it is in the desert and the temperature pretty much keeps dropping until sunrise. Nobody was there to meet us from our hostel like we thought, and there apparently no telephones in the station, so we decided to walk.
I was just glad to be in Ulaan Bataar at this point, and as we walked the sun rose and despite the cold I felt pretty good. It was my first time in Asia proper, and I saw all the little kids walking to school, and the signs for Korean hair salons and everything. It wasn't a pretty city, but it was a very pleasant city and I liked it a lot. We found our hostel by accident because although it is very close to a central landmark, the State Department Store, it is hidden away in a nearby courtyard. We got there around 7:30 and I finally took a shower.

Well that was the first bad part of the trip, but I have run out of time so I will soon write about the rest, which was fun and interesting and safe. But that was the thing. Also, I have been in Russia 2 months and Obama will be the next president of the United States and that's good for me and for the Russians, I think.