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Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
47° 55' N 106° 54' E
Sep 30, 2006 09:31
Distance 0km

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More Sluffing it, I actually Relaxed for 2 days

Text written in: English

Finally to all the people who have asked me how I can remember so much about things that happened so long ago.  I can admit that the exact details of these two days are a bit fuzzy.  I do remember eating a few times at the Berlin Burger.  It was cheap and the food wasn’t good, but I was looking for an approximation of western food after so much noodles. I needed rest from the 16 hour bouncy off road shared jeep trip.  And I was resting in anticipation of 30 more hours to Beijing. I considered making a trip to the Gobi, but if I stayed over 1 month in the country I would be in document trouble, and I was also running late on my calendar.

 

 

I would learn in the morning that the super Mongolian French travelers had eaten some of the food that I had bought in anticipation for a long ride to Beijing.  I bought a copy of Lonely Planet China and a copy of Lonely Planet Southeast Asia on a Shoestring.  I spent $80 which was a fortune.

 

 I visited the Bogd Khan’s summer palace.  It was in the process of much renovation, and still had quite a bit left to go.   Another cultural monument left to crumble thanks to the Soviet Union. 

 

 I spent a few hours on one of the afternoons reading a detailed history of Ghengis Khan.  It was fascinating.   From this glowing account they suggested the major obstacle to the Khan’s armies was not the enemy so much as it was geography that was unsuitable to their horses.  Tropical India killed the cold weather animals, and the forests of central Europe prevented him from conquering those areas.  So where there was grass the Khan prevailed.

 

I went to the train ticket booking office where they were quite helpful. I knew before hand that direct Beijing train tickets are scarce I ended up with a train ticket to the Chinese border at Erlian and a bus ticket from the border to Beijing.  I had no idea that it would be such a well traveled route and that at $30 the travel agent charged me double the price of the bus ticket.  But It was one of those things, I could have showed up to a dusty little town with nothing.  I would learn through the course of my trip that China has a great transportation network, and its pretty easy to use. So that’s the lesson for anyone leaving Ulan Baator and heading to Beijing.  If you take the train to the border at Erlian, there will be at least a few ticket sellers who meet you on the platform and even take you to where the buses leave from.   Also the bus station is only a few km from the train station.  So don’t get robbed by a Mongolian ticket agent, as it happened to me.

 

More than anything I used the wonders of civilization to recover from the rigours of so many noodles and a lot of time spent on a horse.  And of course a lack of English conversations. I was like a kid in the candy store.  I saw a Hollywood film, I think it was one of the X-Man films.  It was my second choice but there was confusion, because there had been a time change to daylight savings time.  Mongolia was like an oasis of subtitled movies.  There were few people and subtitling was cheaper than dubbing.

 

So between good eating and a small amount of western culture I spent the time resting. I was honestly feeling a bit scared about going to Beijing.  Ulan Baator was pretty modest at 1 million people.  Beijing, as I imagined it, would be the craziest urban center I had seen yet.  Dirty, bustling, full of Asian Mystery, but the reality was indeed more astounding than I had imagined.  Beijing was nothing like I had expected. It took about 30 more hours to make it to the capitol of the Chinese Empire.

 

If something more interesting had happened I would remember better.  I did give a couple of bananas to a hungry street kid and I sent off a bunch of post cards.  While I thought I was resting, I really did too many things, but it felt like rest.