Who You Calling Genghis, Chengiz?

After taking the 30 hour train ride from Beijing to UB, a driver and translator picked us up from the train station and drove us 90 minutes to the Terelj Hotel in the Terelj National Park. We visited in mid September and the Terelj Hotel was at it's quietest. We only stayed for two nights and on the second night I believe we were the only people there. It made for an eerie stay. Walking the halls of the beautiful hotel I kept expecting Jack Nicholson to come running around a corner with murder in his eyes and a knife in his hand...but it never happened.
The staff was professional and courteous and the restaurants and lounges plentiful. The indoor swimming pool was impressive, very elegant, and equipped with upscale locker rooms that could have tricked you into thinking you were staying at The Four Seasons. The only problem is we experienced all of this - the restaurants, lounges, pool, and grounds - alone.
As odd as the experience was we had a tremendous time on the second day of our stay. Across the street from the hotel was a horse riding outpost. We ventured over and went through a game of international charades with the wheelchair bound elderly woman in charge of taking orders for the horses. A one hour ride cost approximately US$3.50. My girlfriend and I took her up on the offer and took the horses (with a guide) on a leisurely trot around the camp. The guide and I decided to "run" the horses and my girlfriend decided to sit the "run" out so we separated for about 30 minutes. Running 'em was fantastic...I had never done that before...but my butt was literally black and blue for a solid week thereafter. No pain, no gain. After the horse ride we headed back to our hotel for some much needed r and r. As we hit the bed, exhausted, I noticed my wallet was missing. I can not believe I was foolish enough to not remove it from my back pocket to my backpack but that is exactly what this rocket scientist had done. I headed back to the horse depot to search for my money, plastic, and id.
This is the part of the story that reflects poorly on me. I am walking toward the lady in the wheelchair when an ingenious thought occurs to me: "If I approach this indigent woman and pantomime to her that I have lost my wallet she will simply send one of her guides along the trail where we ran the horse, find it, and keep it."
So, having no faith in my fellow man I detoured around the horse lady and walked the entire path I had previously ridden fervently searching for my wallet. 2 hours later I had not found it. Defeated, I approached the lady and explained the situation with my hands doing all the talking. I did not think she understood one bit of my gesticulating nonsense.
Returning to the Terelj Hotel I was not happy with my predicament. I pouted in the room for entirely too long and then made my way to the front desk to ask for assistance in canceling my credit cards. As I was patched through to my bank, waiting on hold, the young man helping me put up his finger as he received another call. When he finished his call I was still on hold with my bank and he motioned for me to hang up. "You have a visitor at the front gate of the hotel." I do? I walked out the front lobby and took a walk of shame toward the gate that was paramount to any other walks I had taken in college. Humiliation arrested my face and threw away the key. At the gate sat the lady in the wheelchair who had obviously been wheeled down from her perch on the knoll behind us by one of her guides. She smiled and handed me my wallet. I opened it. Everything was there. Even the ridiculous amount of cash I had been carrying. I thanked her profusely and emptied the paper in my wallet into her grateful and shocked hands and turned away just as my face had been transfered from Embarrassment Penitentiary to Waterworks Island.
This is one of the great things, for me, about traveling. Sometimes you meet people who make you want to rethink how you even...think.
I was on a high now. My girlfriend and I headed into the indigent village abutting our elegant hotel. We took pictures of locals in traditional Mongolian garb, bought a couple cold ones from the local market, petted stray dogs and stray bulls (seriously), and then my girlfriend spotted it. "That's my horse!" And it was. We walked up to our horses we had just finished riding two hours earlier and then met with the guide who saw us with his horses. In our pre-established charade language he asked how I liked the ride. I told him my balls hurt. He told me he had very big balls and they did not hurt. He motioned us toward a shack in town (it was 4:30 in the afternoon) and he sent word that the two rich Americans were in the village and that the disco was to be opened. And they did open it. And for the next three hours we had the time of our lives laughing, dancing, drinking, and motioning our words with people who were genuinely happy to play hosts to the "out-of-towners."
After a couple days at the hotel we made our way twenty minutes down the road to a ger camp we had previously picked out. For two days we camped in the ger (a circular tepee minus the conical top) and took in the beautiful surroundings Terelj National Park had to offer. There wasn't much to do at the camp but we were happy to be around a surprising number of Mongolians who were making a weekend of the camp and we were captivated by the clarity in which you could see the stars. Living in Chicago, the only stars we get to see are named John Malkovich and John Cusak and they aren't nearly as brilliant as the ones we saw in Mongolia.
For our last day in Mongolia we headed to UB and rented a dismal room in a Russian block style "hotel" at which to park our bags for the evening. With the luggage tucked in we went out on the town. There is an Irish Pub in UB (I can't remember the name) that is swarming with ex-pats. We spent some time there and then went to an Italian restaurant called Marco Polo. The food was great and the bill was low so we continued on to a couple other establishments before ending the night with some of the worst karaoke ever heard in Asia. My personal apologies to the great Leonard Cohen whose song, "I'm Your Man," was mercilessly butchered by yours truly. At least it was late. Closing time.

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