08.19.08

UB or not UB

Posted in General at 5:21 pm by Suraj

So we left Irkutsk - did I mention that the house was reeking of dried fish that morning?  We all decided to “enjoy the sunshine” and sat in the little park across the road until our transfer turned up.  Yet again it was Dmitri/Sasha/Alex/Vladimir/Boris  that met us and following the dictates of “the system” took us to the train. Nothing exciting on the way but let me tell you about the stinkin’ train.  Actually it didn’t stink it was pretty much the same as all the others.  This time as before we had two female provodnitsas one younger and one older.  It all seemed pretty normal until we got underway.  Did I mention that the girls were all struggling with a mystery stomach virus? One thing I noticed was that there was no paper in the toilet .. not a big deal when you just need to pee.  When you’re trying to expel food from any available outlet however … so in the middle of the night I’m woken to “Suraaaaaj? Do you have any toilet paper?”  Clearly one roll wasn’t enough for three bottoms.  So I got up and retrieved my toilet paper, in pristine condition, from its highly convenient location - In my pack which was in the luggage compartment beneath my bunk, sounds ok until account for the fact that my bunk is the lid of the compartment. I’m not sure that I was fully awake during the whole process but I did have enough presence of mind to tell them to keep it because I wasn’t getting up again.
Apparently they had gone to the provodnitsa and indicated the lack of paper but met with a look of dismissal.  It wouldn’t be so bad if you couldn’t see the pack of toilet paper in their cabin under the able while they told you there was none.  Clearly they were waiting to be paid.  I’d have used the money instead of the paper but their notes are about as clean as chinese small notes which in turn are about as clean as used toilet paper in a public toilet.  I suggested, in the morning .. because I had zero interest in the night, that perhaps they should have just used the provodnitsas cabin instead.  Sort of like mooning them but with extras.  Probably not a good idea though since we could have found ourselves ejected from the train in the middle of the Siberia.   Although that would have been a good story - if we had survived.
 
Eventually we made it to the Russia-Mongolia border and made it through without any great difficulty.  No difficulty but not without another sting.  At some point over night the provodnitsas had removed the tap from the samovar.  It’s been a while so I’ll refresh your memories - The Samovar is the big kettle that dispenses hot water used by all on board for tea/coffee/meals/washing out cups etc.  They then walked through the cabin holding a sign up saying that they required US$1 from each person for hot water.  A nice hand written sign done in blue felt-tip on rumpled paper - I’m sure it was very official and legitimate since the words were all spelled correctly although some were in the wrong spots.  At first we thought it was a joke and though of not paying up but it was soon clear that if everyone didn’t cough up nobody would be getting water.  US$1 = RUB25 = MGT1000 (at the time) but our payment options were US$1 or MGT1000 (Mongolian Tugrik) or RUB50 …. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that we’d just left Russia and would be looking to get rid of rubles.  One of the other passengers asked if he could convert some of his dollars to rubles at that rate … strangely they said no.  So this little bit of highway robbery took place at the border while we were waiting for our passports.  Once we had all paid up they put the tap back on the samovar, clearly they needed US$48 to buy the tap.  One of the more enterprising travellers, a Brit, came around about 15 minutes later carrying a sign saying “Please pay US$10 for the safe return of your passports”.  We all had a laugh which helped to ease the pain or moreso the indignation.  Fortunately for all concerned we had our passports returned without any further requests for “fees” and we were into Mongolia.  The scenery is a lot of nothing … no really I mean nothing.  When people say rolling plains that’s what I think of. except minus most of the grass.  The journey into UB (Ulaan Bataar) was a bit tedious as we didn’t have any significant stops, they all seemed to be 5 minutes at most.  When we were supposedly about 20 mins out I was a little concerned because it looked like we were still travelling through the set of Mad Max.  It didn’t look like we were near a town let alone a Capital City.  I did see something quite strange though.  So most of you know what pick-a-part is.  For those of you that don’t - It’s like a massive junkyard that you pay a small fee to enter and then you wander around find whatever bits you need from various cars etc and then pay on exit for what you’ve extracted.  Ok so now you have a picture.  Imagine that with buildings .. yes you read that correctly - Buildings!
It looked like every pre-fab concrete building ever torn down was then neatly, sometimes not so neatly, dissected and then arranged by category in the desert.  There were window slabs, door slabs and just plain old wall slabs.  I would love to see how the put humpty back together again because I was under the impression that those structures gained their integrity from the steel reinforcements running through.  Just slapping bits back together again didn’t seem viable but then I’m not an engineer nor am I a Mongolian.
 
Now we were just five minutes out form the UB station and it still looked like we were in the middle of nowhere.  By now most of the passengers were out of their cabins and in the aisle hoping for a glimpse of this city that just didn’t seem to be there.  Five minutes later we were in UB station and you could have told me we’d broken down in the Gobi and I’d have believed you.
 
Ulaan Baator - Skip it if you can.
We spent two nights there on either side of our stay at the National Park.  On the first day our “guide” took us for a “City Tour”.  She didn’t really seem to know the city which helped a great deal.  She did know where the Parliament building was - Bonus! and she vaguely knew where there was a department store.  The Department Store is actually state run. Just a word of advice to anyone planning to go there …. take cash.  ATMs are about as common as people born in Sri Lanka that have lived in Australia and currently work in Macau - that’s right … there was ONE.  Ok maybe I exaggerate a little bit, there seemed to be a lot of ATMS by “a lot” I mean more than one but less than a dozen.  The only problem was that they were all Visa Electron and wouldn’t accept any of our cards.  We tried Citibank, Citibank Visa, BNU, ANZ and a few other all to no avail.  The only one that seemed to work was the one in the department store. Anyway back to the wonders of UB.  So we wondered through what appeared to be a post-apocalyptic town - no it’s not a spelling mistake I mean wondered because everywhere we went we’d be wondering if we were in some sort of alternate reality where Internet Cafes outnumbered ATMs.  The guidebook said Internet cafes were plentiful but clearly the author never actually walked into any of them.  If they had ventured inside they would have realised that it was just a sign, the buildings themselves were more often than not a burned out shell.  We didn’t really do much this day other than try and see what was about, we did visit a little temple where the highlight for me was a little chapel decorated with scenes from the tale “journey to the west” which is probably better known to you as the plot of Monkey Magic!
One other oddity was that there seemed to be a disproportionate number of Irish pubs and western styled restaurants for what looked like an extremely poor country/city.  Later on it was obvious where the money was - expat aid workers.  UN jeeps were scooting around all over the place and Mongolia receives a fair amount of aid from foreign nations and as a result there are a lot of expat workers in the city helping with the rebuilding.
 
The next day we headed out to the Terelj National Park where we were to stay in Yurts for a couple of nights.  We stayed at a place called Magic Rock - I’ll explain later.  It’s funny how you get somewhere and you think whooptidoo and then once you been there a while you wish you had longer.  I’ve attached a photo to give you an idea of what the scenery was.  It’s not even a special shot, it’s one I took on horseback at random.  It was very relaxing we even tried a bit of morning horse riding but it was short lived as Kelly is a bit nervous on a horse and Cara was terrified to start with and I’m surprised we were able to convince her to go along in the first place.  My horse seemed more interested in eating anything that didn’t move, and a few things that did, than following the rest of the pack.  This was also the place where we were introduced to Buuz.  Buuz is a steamed dumpling, sort of like gyoza, except each dumpling is about the size of lime.  It’s basically mutton tightly packed into a dumpling skin and steamed.  For those of you that haven’t tried mutton, it’s quite rich.  Trying having about 300g of that for dinner after you’ve had your pasta starter.  Soon we (ok the girls) came to dread dinner time as it meant we were going to be treated to more Buuz.  Even I could barely finish mine plus half of Kelly’s and some of Lisa’s.  Cara was lucky in that she had already said she was a vegetarian and funnily enough probably had the best Vegetarian meals of the trip while out in the Mongolian Desert.  That night we also made a trip out to visit one of the families in the nearby ger camp.  As usual I was the favourite tourist - because I’ll eat and drink anything and lots of it.  I think the lady of the house was surprised when I said I’d have more tea, it was boiled in a big vat and I was gulping while the others were sipping so I was feeling a bit deprived.  That night it was an interesting walk back to our yurts in the dark with only a torch and the Auto Focus Assist beams of our cameras to guide us.  More buuz for dinner, yay!  Most nights were spent swilling beer and playing Canasta.  Cara was an avid Canasta player and her aunt had given her a pack to take on the trip.  Many of the longer train rides were spent alternating between reading, sleeping, eating, playing canasta or playing 500.  I think Kelly and Cara are more the polite and gentle types whereas Lisa and I have mercenary inclinations.  This came through quite clearly when in the first few hands of Canasta, which is supposedly a longer term game of strategy, Lisa and I were always looking for the quick kill ..ahem I mean win.
One thing I love about being out in the middle of nowhere is that there are no streetlights to create that nasty glow which hides all but the brightest stars.  In the Mongolian desert with nothing but the moon in the sky it was quite easy to do a bit of star gazing.  Unfortunately Lisa decided to wear the rain skirt on the last day so our last night was spent under a cloudy sky, it did make for some interesting photos though. If you look closely at the moon photo you can see the yurts.  It was actually quite relaxing and I’d recommend it to anyone especially those of you who are more outdoorsy since it’s a great landscape to explore.  Soon the yurt adventure was over and we headed back to UB for what would be our final night in a city of our journey.
 
Our last day in UB was quite eventful.  We headed out to see The Monastery, I’d say the one and only tourist attraction in town after which it was time to catch up on emails and reconvene for dinner.  While waiting to meet the others Kelly and came across quite the spectacle in the middle of town.  It was the Mongol Rally.  It’s a charity event and basically involves getting from London to Mongolia in a car with engine displacement no more that 1.0L  As you can see from the photos it’s not limited to recent models.  It seems the standard supplies are water, beer and spare tyres.  We sat at a outdoor bar watching the various cars roll in, it looked like a great deal of fun … so…. who’s up for the challenge? I think it takes about two weeks ;)  I’m serious … so if anyone feels like doing this in the next 3-4 years let me know.  So after having watched this roll into town for an hour or two it was a fairly sedate beer or two before dinner and then back to bed.  I should mention though that during our sedate beer, Lisa who had been wanting to get beer glasses for her BF and father asked he waiter if glasses were for sale.  He consulted someone and came back saying yes.  All seemed normal until he turned up with four glasses in a plastic bag and asked her to keep them out of sight.  Clearly some money was being made on the side.  In the end, making the most of the situation she bargained the price down, after all he WAS stealing them and they weren’t brand new.  Not sure how much she paid for them but they were definitely a steal.
 
The next day it was back on the train again for our last leg of the Trans-Mongolian and as luck would have it we were on one of the actual Trans-Mongolian trains.
The carriage attendants were now both male and spoke Mandarin so now we were really lost, they seemed friendly enough though and didn’t charge us for hot water. They seemed thrilled at our ability to say Thank You, No Problem and numbers in Mandarin … until the dutch guy two cabins down started speaking to them in what, to us, appeared to be fluent Mandarin  - Show-off!  This was also a highly anticipated leg of the journey, by some of us anyway, as it was going to be when we did the big bogey switch.  The tracks in Russia and Mongolia are a different width to that of China so at the border they hoist the carriages up and the wheels really do come off the train. Once we were in the change shed most of our time was spent gawking out the window.  Regrettably I was forced to share my window with a tall, blond, attractive, single, dutch girl who decided to introduce herself to me and tell me she was travelling alone so was always happy to meet up with other people travelling alone in case they were going to the same places - seriously .. couldn’t she see I was watching the bogeys being changed?  Luckily for me she popped back into her carriage to get her notebook and before she got back Kelly came out of our cabin and took her spot.  Thanks Kelly, Thanks a Lot.
So it went from being a cheery hello every time we stopped to a nonchalant glance in my direction.  Anyway no time to be bitter now.
 
We finally made it into Beijing and this is going to be the shortest paragraph of all.  The girls were met by their transfer person.  I said goodbye to them walked to the nearest information booth, asked where the met station was, hopped on and was at the airport within the hour. Oh I forgot to tell you … I didn’t have a flight out of Beijing.  I thought I’d book it online at some point but you can’t book one way flights out of China without an approved credit card.  So I got to the Dragon’s Back - Beijing Airport the largest building in the world, walked upto the DragonAir counter, asked when the next flight to HK was and bought a ticket.  So easy, why they wouldn’t let me do that online I’ll never know.  So that’s all there is to tell really ….caught my flight back to HK with no problems.  Actually I was originally going to stay over in HK and have lunch with Tin the next day but when I got to HK I was soo tired and smelly - remember I hadn’t had a shower since the morning I boarded the train in Mongolia so it had been 36 hours or so - I just caught a ferry back to Macau.  The next morning I came back to have lunch with tin and also catch up with Jen, a couchsurfer, who was due to stay with me for a couple of days.  Lucky for her I hadn’t stayed over in HK else she would have been regretting the decision as soon as she got a whiff of  Eau de TransMongolia.
 
So there it is, the end of my Trans-Siberian/Trans-Mongolian adventure.  Like I’ve said in many an email prior I’d definitely recommend it to any and all of you.  If you need company let me know as I’m more than happy to do it again.  I’d still like to do the full TransSib from Vladivostok but then I need to fit the Mongol Rally in too….so much to do so little time.  No big trips planned until later this year when I finish work and possibly head across to Africa.  This is of course assuming that we open this casino at a reasonable time.  I’ll send a Macau update later this week since I’ve been back four months now .. not that much has happened but I have moved apartments, for those of you that have been here - I’m on Macau side now.

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