If you haven’t heard there was a small riot following the Mongolian election. There are two main parties in Mongolia, the Progressives and the Communist. The communist won this election, which did not make the Progressives happy, so in response they progressively burned down the building that housed the Communist party and torch a few cars. They may want to rethink that no alcohol on vote day policy- experience tells me it’s a lot harder to riot when you’ve got a hangover. Got up in the morning and went and visited the Gandan Monastery and the Zaisan memorial. Zaisan i [View Full Entry]

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Today I believe marked the official start of my “Walk About ‘08” adventure…and a slightly auspicious start it was. To explain that first let me digress one day to Saturday the 29th, which until today, was the day I thought I supposed to fly to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia thus marking the start of WA08. I got up at 6AM, caught a taxi at 7 for a 9:30 flight, and sat back for the one hour drive to the airport. Upon trying to check in I was asked, rather shyly and phonetically, by the cute little Chinese girl behind the desk, “uhm, very [View Full Entry]

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I received my introduction to the Mongolian rural road system today. There is very little paved road in Mongolia outside the capital city and about 10km outside the city we turned right onto a rutty dirt road, now I’d been forewarned that the roads were bad and that almost all the driving we would do would be on unimproved dirt road, but what I discovered after five hours of driving while covering roughly 100 miles: is that there is no rural Mongolian road system. What there is a bunch of jeep trails, 10 to 12, which twist and turn and wrap [View Full Entry]

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This blog is so my friends and family can track my journey from the west coast of Asia to the southern tip Africa. The idea behind this journey started in a bar in Shanghai last year. I knew I'd be finishing work soon and really didn't plan on going back to work on anything for sometime and I was talking things over with a friend of mine named Dwight when he suggested, "hey dude you know what you should do you should do is get a bike like mine and ride across China." Dwight has been living in Shanghai for years [View Full Entry]

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