the mongolia post you've all been waiting for

Wednesday: Wednesday was departure day. I spent the afternoon preparing for the trip-packing, buying food, etc. We left for the train at 6:30 in the evening, but it took much longer to get there than we thought. We got there quite a bit later than I would have liked-7:20 for a 7:50. It was funny, though, because we get dropped off at a random street, since the van we took was a "black cab" (unlicensed) and didnt' want to risk getting arrested by the police by going to the train station. It was raining and we had to walk all the way to the station, where we discovered that the station consisted of a big gate with two entrances to one platform, and had we come any earlier, that just would have been that many minutes waiting outside in teh rain. There is a much nicer, bigger station in Beijing, but we were going out of the crummy Soviet built one. I felt like I was in a movie walking down the platform in the rain, with my backpack, and climbing on to a old Soviet-type train, red stars everywhere. It was like James Bond in the one with the train in Russia, only a lot more boring. I had talked about how nice sleeper cars were, since I went in one with the family from Shanghai to Beijing. We had our own compartment with reading lights and everything, but it turns out that we were in soft sleeper, not hard sleeper like my friends and I were in. Hard sleeper means that each car is a long hallway with 6 bunks in individual, but open, sections. The beds do have sheets and pillows, and were rather comfortable, though. Unfortunately, our student tour package apparently didn't think we deserved very good seats, because we were in the section directly next to the bathrooms, which meant that we were subject to hawking and smoke all night long. The train is also funny because they decide when you go to bed and wake up through turning the lights on and off and playing loud Mandopop. (Mandarin pop music). "Bedtime" was about 11 pm, and the music started blaring at 7 the next morning. I didn't sleep so well because of the bathroom noise, overall excitement, loud train whistles, and the fact that everytime I woke up, I saw something cool through the window. Staying up most of the night, I realized that the train was only moving 2/3 of the time-the rest of the time we spent randomly sitting on the tracks in the middle of nowhere, or in an empty station. I don't know why that was. Okay, so 7 am arrived, and we were in Hohhot (in Chinese, Hehouhute), the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which means it has a little puppet government but is part of China. Before I forget, let me note that that was one of the most disappointing things about the trip, but something that i should have realized-the culture has really been subject to Han-icization. In other words, the Chinese have flooded the area with their people and their culture so as to minimize the threat to sovereignty. That just means I'll have to go to Mongolia proper, which has moved to the top of my list of places to visit. Okay--on to Thursday!

Thursday: So we arrived in Hohhot. Our guide was waiting for us on the platform, so that was reassuring. He even knew the car number we were in. The train station was much nicer than Beijing's, but the city is quite a bit smaller. Overall, it's maybe the size of..hmm..Folsom, or Arlington/Rosslyn. Medium sized buildings, both office and hotels, but mainly composed of small streets with little shops, restaurants, and at night, converted in to night markets selling all sorts of things. Anyways, so our guide took us the travel office where we waited for the other people in our tour. In the meantime, we went to breakfast, where our guide wanted us all to have a bowl of the local speciality. It's a good thing we decided to share a bowl, because it turned out the speciality was sheep intestine, stomach lining, heart, and liver in a broth. It actually wasn't bad, but I declined a taste of the lining, as it did have a really noticeable texture, and that's the clincher for me. We headed back to the office and met our Korean traveling companions (who separated from us half way through the trip, and were quite cliqueish the whole time, though we tried to reach out). We hopped in a van, all 12 of us, and headed out into the countryside. We also met our guide, Frank (real name Yuntong), a Han Chinese (the majority) who was a pretty nice guy with limited English. The tour was pretty much conducted entirely in Chinese. After a few hour van drive, we stopped at a complex with a few small yurts (Mongolian tents, pretty solid, circular, see picture below) and a big yurt. We ate a pretty average Chinese lunch while listening to a musical performance that was supposed to pass for culturally Mongolian. Actually, as cynical as I sound, they did use a very interesting guitar like instrument that we would see several more times through the trip. I'm not sure we could have done the tour ourselves, but sometimes the tourist locations we went to got a little depressing, especially since that's definitely not the way I've been brought up. We just didn't get to see a lot of genuine places, but it was really convenient. Next time I'll go by myself. After lunch, we drove out to the Resonant Sand Gorge, a desert area. The area surrounding Hohhot, a 3 hour drive radius, is quite geographically diverse, as the desert was just one kind of geography. We put our feet in fabric booties to prevent sand in the shoes and climbed up a sand dune. At the top of the sand dune was a big pen with about 30 camels, just chilling. We decided to take a camel ride, and were persuaded to do the hour long ride, which, they assured us, included the sight of various indigenous animals. The camels were tied together by plugs that went through holes that had been pierced below their noses. You got on to the camel while it was lying down, but it was really scary when it got up, because it did its back legs first, pitching you forward, and then its front legs. I felt like a real Mongol traversing dramatic sand dunes in a loping camel, sand stinging my face. I also talked a little with our guide (who just walked our line of camels) and who was a real Mongol, a rarity. The weather that day, as well as the whole trip, was a lovely average of 75 degrees, and decently warm at night, despite horror stories I had heard to the contrary. The animals they had promised us turned out to be this freakish "zoo" in the middle of the desert. There were an assortment of animals, like a ram tied up by his horns so he could only walk in a small circle, an owl, an angry looking wild cat, a desert fox, and a few others. Whoever had the idea to build a zoo in the middle of the desert was insane. I suppose Chinese don't think much of it, but us Americans were really appalled at the conditions for these poor guys. This, plus the crappy way they treated the camels really reminded me of the fact that the Chinese have no concept of animal rights. Human rights, either, now that I think of it. After the camel ride, I ran down the sand dune, as opposed to pay to slide down, and we drove back to Huhhot. We had a pretty nice hotel and we were two to a room. I ended up getting my own room, though, which was nice. We went to another average Chinese dinner and then were free to do what we wanted. Our guide discouraged us from goign out, but we were five people, so we decided we would be safe enough, adn went out to the street. Everyone was out--walking, biking, selling mutton on sticks, lamb heads, fruit, eating it, and sitting at large outdoor bars. We sat down, enjoyed a few local beers, and watched the people go by until we decided to go back and get some rest.


Friday: We started out the day with breakfast at the hotel, which was a typical Chinese breakfast of rice porridge (zhou, which I'm developing a fondness for) and a variety of cold dishes. Thank goodness for the corn bread. Our activity for much of the morning was a visit to two different temples in Hohhot, which were both quite interesting. They were Buddhist, I think..I've seen so many they all run together! I suppose the highlight was that the monks were eating their breakfast and doing their daily prayers in one of the temples, and we got to watch that. It's pretty funny-they have their traditional maroon and saffron colored robes, but they all wear Nikes, or another American sneaker brand. After the temples we experienced the worst aspect of a tour in China-the factory stop. They take you to a factory, a cashmere/souvenir one in our case, show you around, and then subject you to hideous goods for appalling prices. Your guide gets a cut of the profits, and you apparently see how industrious China is. They never look like sweatshops, its always a really clean room (although this one wasn't air conditioned) and the workers are all made to wear some sort of ethnic clothing. It's a creepy little facade for what one obviously realizes is a booming sweatshop industry. After the factory, we again took a long drive through very lovely mountainous terrain and arrived at what we called a "yurt RV park". There were a lot of yurts lined up in a little area with a larger yurt with a restaurant. We ate at the restaurant and checked in. Our yurt was so cute-see picture-and actually was quite comfortable inside. It had carpet on the floor and had no furniture except for a small table and had pillows and blankets. After we settled in and had a little nap, we went out to the outskirts of the complex to watch "traditional" Mongolian wrestling and horse racing.
I could see how it could have been in the old days, but these days, the Mongols rode in on their horses talking on their cell phones, and took off their Adidas jackets to reveal their "traditional" clothes. Anyways, it was pretty cool, but the best part was afterwards, when we decided to go on a horse ride. Most of the tourists went ahead of us in huge packs, and their horses were all tied together. We, seeing this problem, hung back a bit and got our own little tour, with our horses all free to go. We were persuaded to take the 2 hour tour, so that we could see the well that was apparently in the middle of the grasslands. Funny story though, when we got to the spot, the guide had no idea what well we were talking to, and I realized that it was just a place for us tourists to get off our horses, stretch our legs, and be harassed by the same vendors we had been harassed by at our point of departure, who had gotten on their motorbikes and followed our horses. The vendors were hauling around "traditional" mongolian clothes which you coudl put on and get your picture taken in, as well as little baby lambs that you could get your picture taken with. We declined all offers, and they strapped their lambs to their back and drove off into the grassland. We continued with our horse ride, which was lovely. The horses were not nearly as docile as the ones they give you in America, and it took some concentration to keep them following our guide. They also went pretty fast. The grassland was beautiful and we got out to the middle of nowhere (save the hawkers) before we turned back. That's the picture with the cow. After our ride, we had dinner in the same average place and then went to a "traditional" performance. There were a lot of men and women in sparkly, psuedo-Mongolian outfits singing some songs of varying traditional seeming backgrounds. There were some beautiful songs sung in Mongolian by a striking woman and a rock song sung by a guy in a full red pleather suit. After the performance the five of us hung out by the campfire and for the next three hours, talked with about 10 other Chinese tourists and sung our respective national anthems. It was one of those great cultural experiences that you can't plan-they just happen. We went to bed at 12:30 or so and got up at 4:30 to see the sunrise, which turned out to be a bust-the clouds were obscuring the sunrise. Lame. There's a great picture of me at 4:30, dirty and definitely unhappy.



Saturday: So after our lame sunrise experience, we went to sleep, only to have our guide wake us up at 7:15. We had breakfast at the yurt complex (it was zhou, rice porridge with an assortment of little crackers and grains to add into it, as well as sour yak's milk) and then drove out to what our guide called a traditional "shepherd's hut". It was composed of three small buildings linked together, all cement, and in the middle of nowhere. We really didn't do anything but have a small breakfast again, and after stopping at a small little altar to some kind of Mongolian god, we went back to the yurt to pack up and head back to Hohhot. The tour was officially over once we got to Hohhot, but we wanted to go to a hotel and drop off our stuff for the afternoon before our train at 11 pm and shower, and our guide thought he could help us with finding a hotel. We just wanted to go to the hotel we had stayed at previously, but he took it upon himself to lead us to a weird sketchy bathhouse 40 minutes away from teh train station and main street. We felt bad, but as soon as we saw how sketchy it was, we got in a taxi to the other hotel and left him there. At the other hotel, we got a suite for the afternoon for about $7 a piece and all took showers. We then went to a traditional mongolian restaurant as recommended by the hotel. It was funny, because when we got to the restaurant, we asked for traditional food, but it turns out that we didn't know what we were asking for--traditional mongolian food involves a lot of entrails and beef jerky like products. So we ended up with a delicious meal of some traditional lamb pancakes, lamb noodles, Chinese tofu, chinese eggplant, and something else i forgot. mm. i'm getting tired, so I'm goign to wrap this up. we got on the train, took 2 hours longer than expected, and we drove past the Great Wall, shrouded in mist.

Sunday-arrived back in Beijing. Yay, all finished! and I've spent so much time discussing what we did, i don' t have time for anything else! i'll write more when i get a chance. it was a great trip, and i am just so thankful to my parents for giving me the adventurous spirit to go someplace other than a beach resort town, like everyone else did.