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Hello from Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia,
I am on Day 5 (& 6) of what should really be called "My North Asia Adventure" because the Trans-Siberian Railway is only half of it. Right now I'm on the Trans-Mongolian part of the trip. OK, I'll go back to the begining - although the lettering on this keyboard on the guesthouse PC is really faded and the light is dim, so I may not last long. Please excuse the typos
I left Beijing last Saturday, 14th May and took a 6-hour train journey northwest to Datong in Shanxi Province, China. I had decided to stop there because I had heard of theYunyeng Grottoes/Caves and the Hanging Temple and I wanted to see them. I don't usually go to see historical works of art but I decided to make an exception and I'm glad I did. I had booked a hotel online (well, my Chinese colleague did) and booked to go on the day tour with the Chinese International Travel Service. When I arrived in Datong and was sorting the times, etc with the CITS and booking into the hotel there was an American man doing the same thing. We decided to go and check out the temples in the city centre. He is a retired Physics professor from MIT in Boston and now teaches part-time in MIT and Harvard while he writes a book for each of them (or something). He was over in China for a few weeks as guest lecturer and gave some extra lectures in Beijing on academic ethics. You can meet some interesting people when you're travelling.
Later I went to find a place to eat and decided that the restaurant that was recommended was far too fancy so I headed down a side street. It was only a block long, then the streetlights were dim. As I reached the end of the bock and crossed the street to check out the other side I saw a small cafe with a big glass window and about 6 tables topped with chipped melamine - my kind of place! There were quite a few locals dining there so I decided it must be good. They even managed to understand my Mandarin and I got a geat dinner of gombao chicken. I accompanied it with rice wine and Sprite - "Gam bei!" (The Chinese toast, like "Bottoms up!")
The trip to the grottoes the next morning was very good. They were carved in a sacred mountain in the 5th century,during the Northern Wei dynasty.That was one of only two non-Han dynasties in Chinese history. Apparently the Emperor used to worship at this mountain so he ordered that Buddhas be carved and the work was continuous for 60 years, involving 40,000 craftsmen. There are a lot of caves, stretching for over a kilometre, but there are 20 that have been less weather-beaten and the carvings and paintings are still good. There are over 50,000 carved Buddha images and religious figures in the caves. The Chinese government are really waking up to the potential for tourism and the entrance and walkways have been rebuilt to accommodate large numbers of visitors.
The afternoon was to be spent on the 1+ hour drive to the Hanging Temple, and lunch before theTemple for the others in our group. However, the construction of a new highway led to an amazing traffic jam. There must have been 1,000 trucks stuck, going each way. We sat in the traffic jam off and on for about 3 hours, in the blazing heat. We had a professional driver and a mini-bus. At one point he drove down a hillside and along a dry riverbed to try and avoid the jam. It didn't help much. But we got to the Hanging Temple before it closed. No time for the others to eat first.
The Hanging Temple was built at the same time as the grottoes and is a temple about 5 feet wide at the widest, affixed to the side of a cliff. Apparently men were lowered on ropes and they chipped at the stone until there was a hole large enough for a wooden pole to be driven straight into the mountain. Can you imagine how long that took with primitive tools? Then they started on the next one. When they had enough of these supports in place they built the temple resting on the support beams. It is a series of small temples to Budda and some sleepng and eating accommodation. The monks must have lived there practically 24/7 because it was so inaccessible.
There were only 4 people in the group and the young guide assured us that we would have no traffic jam going back, but there was STILL no time to stop to give the three others lunch. Luckily I had eaten fruit, etc. so I wasn't starving. We did hit a traffic jam on the way back which delayed us 2 hours and we arrived in Datong at 8:30pm. The 2 Malaysian ladies had a train at 10:30pm and had eaten nothing since 8:30am. They were actually sick. Really silly tour guide. Luckily I almost never take group tours. I was very happy to go back to the little cafe and have another feast for about $2/€1.50
The next day I took a local bus at 9:00am to the border with Mongolia. I would have had to take 2 trains and that would have taken much longer. This would take 7 - 8 hours. Per usual I was the only foreigner on the crowded bus. I enjoyed looking at the scenery. We had one toilet stop, in a concrete hut. OK, I have now found The Worst Toilet of my travels. I won't explain but "open pits" will give you an idea.
The plan was to get to Erlian on the Chinese side of the border about 16:00, pass through Customs to Zamyn-Uud on the Mongolian side, take a taxi to the train station and get the 17:50 train to Sainshand. Sounds simple, eh? Ohmigod. Suffice to say nothing went according to plan. When I got off the bus nobody in Erlian could tell me where the border/Customs was, despite me waving my passport and making a stamping gesture. Finally a taxi driver took me to the Mongolian consulate. They sent us to the train station where the Customs officers were. The train I wanted was there but I couldn't get on it because I did't have a ticket and the ticket office was closed. gr-r-r. They went on about this while MY train chugged off into the setting sun!
A nice Chinese Customs officer who spoke English arranged for a taxi to take me to Zamyn-Uud, or so I thought, but it was only to the boder. I can't explain the chaos that ensued with me having to get into a Range Rover with 5 strange Mongolians who insisted on keeping my bags and sending me through one Customs, buying a ticket (for what?), drove another 200 metres and bought another ticket, more queues. I did manage to change RMB into thousands of Mongolian Ts. All this went on for about an hour, then back into the black 4X4, now with 5 people in the back seat, and off we drove. I was dropped at Z-U train station but of course my train was long gone. The good news - there was another train going at 7:30, the actual Trans-Siberian train from Beijing. Yippee! The bad news - it was sold out and the ticket office was closed. Misery.grumble, grumble, now what?
Z-U is a one-horse town if ever there was one. The only hostel was full so I went to the hotel. The receptionist said I could have a room overlooking the railway tracks - or nothing. I was negotiating this with the help of a mid-30's Mongolian man with good English who was hanging about. Then he said, "Where do you want to go? I can arrange for you to go anywhere and get accommodation for you there." To make a lomg story short, we went for dinner in the hotel with his very tall friend who used to work in the train station and knew the director. This English-speaker is obviously one of the up-and-coming "entrepreneurs" who was waiting for a shipment of machinery which he was selling to the Mongolian government. After dinner we went to the train station where his friend "bought" me at ticket for a 7-hour train ride for €5/$7 and I even got a bottom bunk. By 7:00 I was fed and watered and on the train.
I sat there thinking of Forrest Gump and, to mis-quote him, "Travelling is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you'll get."
Sitting opposite me on the train was an Australian woman of about 38, Didi, a yoga teacher who told me she had been living in Mongolia since1993. They only got independence in1990 so this was very unusual. She had been visiting Ulan Bataar (UB) and been horrified to see street children so she set up a home, Lotus House, which is going ever since. At one time she had 140 children from infants to 16 yr but now the youngest is 3 years old. Some have gone on to University, got married, had babies, etc. At present there are 90 children and they have a primary school on site. We had a great chat unil she had to move to another part of the train. (She was one of the many who had no ticket so no bed. I don't get it. She said there were many in her position on the train.) I am going out to Lotus House children's home tomorrow so I'll know more then. Didi also mentioned that they run a Lotus Guest House in UB to help fund the home and to give work to the "graduates".
I had arranged to stay in Gobi Sunrise Ger Camp, 18km outside Sainshand. It was a bit expensive but I was treating myself. The Mongolian man rang them from Zamyn-Uud and said I wouldn't be arriving in Sainshand until 2:00am and they said they'd collect me then and bring me out to Gobi Sunrise. We drove out on the lunar lanndscape of the Gobi desert under a full moon. Wow!
A ger is a circular felt home used by Mongolian nomads. Gobi Sunrise has made such houses for visitors. It was fantastic, with the traditional hole in the roof where the sun shines in and the stove pipe exits. In bad weather and sand storms they cover the hole with felt sheets held down by ropes with heavy rocks on the end. My ger had a bathroom built on.
The next morning they arranged for a driver to come and take me and the house manager, Bayasaa, out to the very Buddhist religious temple and monastery, Khamary Khiid, and nearby Shambala that has become world famous as "The Energy Centre." It has grown up around the cult of Damzan Ravjaa who died in 1858 and whom many locals believe to have been a living god. Basyraa said that many people used to worship out there in the desert until the Russians came in 1937 and made religion illegal. Now the area has been revitalised and the faithful use the many meditation caves in the hills of volcanic rock. The Gobi desert holds many dinosaur remains and they have found an entire spine which is on display. There is no security at all and anyone could walk off with a few bones for souveniers. All in all, it was a great day out under a sky that was clear blue except for whiter-than-white puffy clouds. Now I see why Mongolia is called "The Land of Blue Sky."
We ended our drive at the train station in Sainshand where I took the 9:00pm overnight train here to Ulaan Bataar. Because I was late booking I got The Worst bunk in the platsykart lowest class carriage. My bed was formed by two chairs with a folding table in-between and was at the end of the wagon where people would be banging by to go to the toilet or get water. I had read that the wagon "stewardesses" could change things if asked. Sure enough, one kindly let me bribe her 1,000 Togruk to so I could sleep in the upper bunk above her work station (where she wouldn't be working anyway after 10:00pm). That turned out well.
Once the train was rollling she filled a lot of paper cups on a tray with boiling water from the small stainless steeI boiler in the passageway and offered them to the passangers with tea bags. I know that every train has this free hot water service and passengers are advised to bring Cup-a-Soup and instant noodle dishes for the journey. When I looked closer I saw that the water heater was fired by coal! I could hardly believe it, even though there is a lot of coal in this part of the world.
Before I settled down for the night I rigged up my Baa-Baa Blind of blackout fabric and it made a lovely cave for me. About midnight a friend of the stewardess got on with her baby so she let her sleep in my "bed" for free, I guess, and they talked for hours right beside me. But I did get some sleep and I even managed to get down in the middle of the night when Nature called.
I will have 3 more overnight trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway and I have booked a lower bunk in all of them. I will be in a female-only carriage twice. Anyone travelling should surely get that blind/curtain, made by Gro andavailable online. I've introduced it to my two daughters-in-law who now swear by it for getting their children to sleep on sunny days.
Speaking of Nature calling, when I got up at 7:00am the toilet door was locked. The stewardess pointed to the sign, in English, that it will be locked for a half-hour before and after every stop. Well, this was not the express train so it stopped every 15 minutes until UB at 8:00am. Not nice.
I had been in touch by email with a young Mongolian man who lived in England for four years, a friend of a friend in Beijing. He met me at the station and brought me to pick up my ticket for the overnight train to Irkutsk, Russia. We then came here to Lotus House Guest House. It's great and I have a room of my own for $20/night, cooking facilities and this PC. My Netbook won't collect for some reason. All prices quoted in Mongolia are in US$, I guess because 1,000s of Tobruks is confusing.
Didi called in after I was settled and we arranged a driver to take me out to the countryside today. We saw lots of rolling hills and horses. Did you know that there are 13 horses to every person in Mongolia? It is officially the least densely populated country inthe world.Now I'm waiting for the Mongolian man to ring and tell me what time we are meeting at the North Korean restaurant. Apparently there is only one NK restaurant in Mongolia and one in Beijing. I am very interested in North Korea, so I can't wait to taste the cuisine!
Tomorrow I go out to see the children's home in the morning and at 14:00 I'll take the overnight train to Irkutsk, Siberia, arriving at about 15:00 Saturday (I think). Then I'll begin Phase II of this adventure!
Later - thoughts on Mongolia. The North Korean restaurant was great. As we hailed a taxi I noticed again how nearly every car on the streets of UB is white. UB is the coldest capital city in the world and the winter is only begnning to recede now. There are small green buds on the trees and no flowers anywhere. There is snow for 6 - 7 months of the year and there was a big snow storm last week. I asked my new friend why everyone had white cars and he said, "They figure it is the easiest colour to be seen." In snow? Go figure, but that probably sums up Mongolia.
They are very greedy for touristy dollars but nobody speaks English. One of the young women working here has completed a 4-year degree in Tourism and she can hardly say one sentence in English. Yet the tour companies charge $275 to take a tourist out of the city to visit a family in a ger, stay overnight in a modern ger in a park, and drive back to UB the next day. I've since discovered that there are good tour companies, Golden Gobi and some U.B.guest house starting with a "K." that does good tours too.
I have been in many foreign cities of late and I have to say that UB is the grottiest. The sidewalks are all crumbling, tiles broken, curb stones broken, sand everywhere so it is very hard to pull/drag my small wheelie, chaotic traffic that makes Beijing look polite and orderly in comparison. The drivers lunge at pedestrians and make no attempt to stop. The traffic lights are a joke. Nobody speaks English or can give directions so I gave up asking. They certainly don't welcome foreigners. They don't even give phoney touristy smiles like in Vietnam or Cambodia. However a volunteer staying here these days said that in the rural areas the local people are much more friendly that in UB. Backpackers who went on tours said the Mongolian families were very nice too. She said that UB has a terrible name for pickpockets and petty criminals. The language is very odd too and after 4 days I still can't say one word in Mongolian. That is unusual for me.
According to my new friend there is no such thing as national pride and pulling together to make Mongolia a better place. I'm very surprised and disappointed by all this because I was so eager to come and see Mongolia. I'll have to come back for a 4 or 5 day tour and see another side of this country.
Oh well, I'll chalk it up to experience and move on tomorrow. As Forrest Gump says.....
Ciao, Sheila
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Another great blog. Keep them coming.
Would love to see some of your photos. We would like to do that trip. When we did our around the world trip we utilized agoda.com and asiarooms.com to assist us in getting good prices on rooms. You may want to check them out.