The Mongols are coming!

We got out at UB to be met by Bobby, a Mongolian woman who ran the UB Guesthouse with her Korean husband, Mr. Kim. Jay has known Mr. Kim for 6 years and had arranged for us to all take lodging with him. UB Guesthouse was one of the recommended Lonely Planet (LP) spots so it sounded perfect.

We arrived at the UB Guesthouse and got to our little aprt housing. Mr. Kim is a stocky guy with a penchant for adding “You know?” at the end of most of his sentences. He treated us all out to the Korean restaurant near the guesthouse which turned out to be really good. It was quite a coincidence since Kmobo had just the day before on the train wished and wished for Sang gyup sal which is exactly what we had (in addition to a bunch of other Korean goodies). Afterwards Jay took us to see some traditional Mongolian dancing and throat singing.

We all walked back and everyone was tired. I was the only one that wanted to go out so I packed my backpack and headed out for Ikh Mongol, a bar with live music. I hopped in a taxi and said “Ikh Mongol”; he looked at me like I was a one armed midget in a wrestling costume licking my own feet…… exactly like that. I repeated and showed him a map and the name. He said, “ah, ok” and proceeded to take me to a random bar out on the outskirt of the city and overcharging me (but only about 200 togrogs, approx 20 cents). I saw some foreign languages written on the bar so I went in and found a German couple who spoke English. They wrote down the info in Mongolian and I jumped in another cab which took me there. I walked into the large beer hall/restaurant and with great difficulty, ordered a beer. I found the manager who happened to speak English and since amongst a sea of parties I didn’t want to sit in a separate room alone, I went outside to the outdoor seating even though it was near freezing. I took out my laptop and found they had a wireless connection. After a phone call home, I went inside and found a table near the band. They were playing a pop rock Mongolian throat singing fusion style to which all the foreigners politely clapped and cheered. After another beer they started to close up and I headed back, eased into my sleep sheet on the top bunk while everyone else snored and went to sleep.

Let me introduce a new character. I almost forgot about him (with much effort). Let’s just call him…. Dick. After a day I realized I really didn’t like Dick. Dick was for lack of a better word…… a real annoying son of a bitch. He had missed the train with Jay and his crew and had flown the UB, getting there before us. We all got up and packed into Mr. Kim’s minibus. After braving the streets of UB, we made it out Terelj National Park where we were to stay with a Mongolian family in their ger camp for 3 days/2nights. The spot was really picturesque and appealing. The outhouse made me realize immediately that I would not be bombing Toliet-istan anytime in the next 3 days. We met a group of 4 English speakers at the camp already there. 2 were Americans teaching in China, one was a Berkeley student (and quite a stereotype if I don’t say so myself), and there was John, an Australian out on month 7 of his trip.

We rode around on a camel for a bit, very soft, fluffy, and with an amazingly painful spine that felt like a karate chop to the nether regions with each trot. Afterwards came dinner prep. Jay had asked us all before if we wanted to have the guy kill a sheep for dinner. One at a time everyone expressed distaste at the idea, except for me. They sheep was to be killed in a traditional Mongolian fashion and I wanted to see it. Dick basically said I was a barbarian, even though he eats meat (but not pork!). Luckily, the ger camp guy decided to do it anyway. And surprise! Not only did Dick watch, but he videotaped it to show others (So did I but I wasn’t the hypocrite). The ger guy brought out the sheep, held it down and made a small incision in the belly. He reached in and snapped the artery to the heart inside the sheep. The sheep got dizzy and he hit the sheep’s head on the ground to knock it out. It is a form of bloodless killing that apparently dates back to Chingis Kahn. He said, “finished” to which the sheep let out a couple of weak bleats. He grabbed its head and hit it on the ground a couple of times and it was dead. Kmobo went over as he was doing this with a pained look on his face. He patted the guy on the shoulder and said, “It’s ok”. It’s ok? Then he went and talked to the sheep and said, “It’s ok” (for the sheep it was decidedly not ok). As a side note, both Dick and Kmobo ate heartily, in fact, after Dick had been kicking back in his ger while the rest of us carried stuff up to set up for dinner, he came out and demanded a lion’s portion of the food). Ger guy built a fire in a big metal tin with fire wood cut from giant trebuchets and siege towers that they had used for some anniversary re-enactment of a Chinghis Kahn battle and put the freshly skinned and butchered sheep in with some tea, an onion, and some salt into a big metal milk container like jug. This whole thing went on the fire and stewed.

After dinner, an old Scandinavian guy built us a fire around which we talked until bedtime. The next day we had a 6 hour horse ride on Mongolian mini horses. We went out to Turtle rock and a monastery that the Dahlia Lama had recently visited. After we got back we had dinner after which I built a fire, the Norwegian guy having left the camp earlier that day. I went down to get some more wood only to find Dick had come and taken my spot at the fire. There were no more spaces so I told him, “hey, that was my seat”
“So? Does it have your name on it?”
“Yup, it’s under your ass”
“Well too bad”
“Dude, I built this fire, you took my seat and by the way, you’re extremely rude”
“What did you just say?” (in a very ‘ghetto’ tone)
That’s when Kmobo butts in, “Dude, don’t be passive aggressive, be a man and if you have a problem say so.”

Realizing this was a useless battle I stood until the Tsinghua crew went to their tents. The rest of the people were really cool and swapped stories which turned into a discussion on Japan’s attempt to colonize sections of eastern Asia when from the darkness….

“I DIDN’T COME OUT TO FUCKING MONGOLIA TO HEAR YOU GUYS GIVE A FUCKING HISTORY DISERTATION. IF YOU WANT TO DO THIS SHIT TAKE IT TO YOUR OWN GER!”
Which by the way is really cool, where else do you get to tell someone, “take it to your own Ger”
Everyone looked in disbelief at each other, it was around 10pm. One of the group said, “Um, yea well maybe we would if you asked us nicely.”
“LIKE I FUCKING CARE”
Gotta love the Tsinghua crew. Only thing was I was sleeping in the same ger as the guy. It was freezing cold at night so I snuck into the ger and struck up a fire in the furnace that heated the whole tent and got into my bunk as quietly as possible.

I got up in the middle of the night thanks to a full bladder and the cold since the fire in the stove had gone out. I went outside in the middle of the night and as soon as I stepped out into the freezing cold night I froze…. figuratively. The sky was peppered with a million stars, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life… and that was without my glasses. I went back inside and grabbed my glasses and still in a t-shirt went out again and stood motionless for 10 minutes (all I could stand in my t-shirt in negative something degree temp) in awe. I’ve never seen so many stars, it looked like someone had their finger on a coke bottle full of blue white paint, shook it up and let it fly onto a black canvas. Everything was crystal clear. I could see shooting stars and satellites moving across the sky. The major stars were ultra bright and stood out more than I’d ever seen and I finally understood how people back in the day were able to say that constellations looked like bears and people grabbing snakes, they stood out so clearly amongst all the other scattered stars. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.

The next day we were off, back to the UB Guesthouse. John had made plans with my brother and I to meet up in Irkutsk, our next destination, and after a quick trip up to a monument up on a hill from which we could see all of UB and a stop at Mr. Kim’s tank locker right passed the Black market (an old Soviet tank repair warehouse Mr. Kim had bought and stored his vehicles in), my brother and I headed out with a bunch of backpackers we met at the guesthouse for a night out. (We’d had just about enough of the Tsinghua group for above mentioned and other things which I’ve tried to forget). The backpackers were more our speed, nice, interesting, non judgmental, and out to have a good time. We grabbed some pizza/pasta (having already tried boatz, or however you spell it, and a couple other must have Mongolian foods) and went back to Ikh Mongol this time with a big group of people and had a blast. A couple of the gals and girls got a little tanked and we swapped pictures and emails. The next day Mr. Kim gave us a lift to the train station and we said peace off to UB.

Thus starteth the Trans-Mongolian Railroad portion

We left on the number X train from the station in Beijing for Ulaanbaator. I knew that my friend from the ’05 Tokyo program would be on same train. I’d emailed Jay for tips on UB since he had served in the Peace Corps there a couple years back, as coincidence would have it, he was studying at Tsinghua for his LLM and was headed to UB the same day. We left the station and I went car to car looking for Jay until I found him with a fellow classmate, Richard, in first class no less! Since he booked in Beijing directly, it turns out he paid less than I did for his cabin which was the exact same as ours but without the two top bunks.

Our cabin had four bunks. My brother and I top a top and bottom and the only other person was a German lady…… for now. After catching up with Jay for a bit, I met the other two people on the train with him, the Mormon brothers (hereinafter “Mobos”), one of them fluent in Korean (“K-mobo”) and one in Japanese (“J-mobo”), both married to Korean and Japanese women respectively (more on them later). There was a dining car that served Chinese food and we hung out there for a while playing cards with an Australian couple and ate diner until we were forced out by a mini sandstorm in the dining car, the Gobi’s creeping advance on Beijing added sand sauce on our tomato and egg with rice dish as well as filled the air in a sepia haze. We headed back to our bunks in time for customs for China. After the China guards collected our visa info we moved a few hundred meters or so for the Mongolian portion. They collected our passports and we were permitted to get out at the station. We knew that China had different gauge tracks and so we needed to change the undercarriages of the cars before moving on. We got out and after a little while we heard a whistle. Jay said something to the carriage lady (he speaks Mongolian quite a bit) and we rushed back to our cars. Then it started moving very slowly but I thought it strange that everyone else was still on the tracks. We moved into a train depot and my brother and I went a car over to where the Mobos were. They separated the cars, locked us in (with the bathrooms locked too) and lifted the cars in the air 3-4 meters one at a time to change the wheels. It took a good 1.5 hours and was a bit rocky. After silently thanking Jay for our predicament (though we were more ignorant than he was) we all started talking about Korea and various other things we shouldn’t have started a dialogue over. Kmobo was very very patronizing, and very effective at it too I’ll admit. In retrospect, very much the stereotype from the South Park episode. After the 2nd “That’s a really really good point” I started getting a bit annoyed by the Fulbright scholars holier than thou attitude. He made it a point to say a couple times that, “yea we’re Mormon but don’t worry you can drink and stuff, we don’t judge”.

Everyone got back on and about this time a pot bellied Mongolian with beer on his breath tried to move into our car. He had a large package in a trash bag taped up real tight. We all looked at each other and asked if he had a ticket. He said he did and not to worry about it in broken English. He said he worked for the consulate so don’t worry about it. We asked when he got on, he said Beijing.
“Where have you been the whole time” The German lady asked.
“I have a ticket”
“Can we see it?”
“I have it, don’t worry about it” pointing at our stuff and then pointing up on the deck.
The German lady left to ask her new friend, the English speaking Mongol in the next cabin about what was going on. To be honest, I just didn’t want another dude in our cabin, especially since he was a bit boozed up.
“Fine, you don’t want me, I go, but I need leave package”
Now this sounded familiar. I saw the movie in my head where Claire Danes goes to prison when the package she’s holding has drugs in it and gets seized by customs and she has to eat poisoned fish heads and sticky rice. Then I saw the movie but instead of Claire Danes it was a guy that looked a lot like me. That’s when I had to speak up
“I don’t think so”
(This is where in the movie version of my trip I kick him in the jewels and throw him out.)
He stared at me and I pointed to the German lady.
“Ok. You speak English and?”
“Um….. Korean”
“You speak German?”
“No”
“I speak German!” -the German lady
“Ok”
He left and brought back another plump Mongolian, this one with glasses and well dressed, dress shirt and slacks. He spoke passable English and fluent German. They went back and forth for a while and it was agreed that he’d stay there. The package would stay with him.
We started talking to the German speaking Mongolian (the name coined by the German lady) and he seemed like a pretty decent guy, and made us people that judge books by covers much more at ease. He left and a bit later they came back and took the package and left. It turns out the carriage attendants run a side business, besides charging to use the what should be free samovar (hot water dispenser at the front of each car), they sell empty beds at discount prices to people they pick up. (Even turned out that the original guy did work for the Mongolian consulate.) and the package was clothing that Mongolians like to bring back when they go to China since things are much cheaper there. The guy in the next cabin that befriended German lady even had a bunch of people hold pairs of shoes he had for customs so they wouldn’t charge him.
They switched out the dining car to a Mongolian style one with a bad 80s diner motif and we went to sleep. We slept through most of the Gobi desert and woke to our arrival in UB and to realize when I opened my eyes that after all the ordeal with the Mongolian 4th in our cabin, they had put some lady there in their place in the middle of the night while I slept.