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Published: June 19th 2010
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My time in Mongolia was great. I met up with the two British guys that I had met in Russia and we decided to go on a tour of the Mongolian countryside. It was much cheaper of a trip with the more people you had. They had also found a Dutch couple, so there was five of us on this five day tour that was set up by our hostel. I had a day in the city before leaving for the country and Ulaanbaatar was very dusty giving the city a dirty look to it, although I am not sure it was just from the dust. It was a very poor looking city. A review on the internet about our hostel was that a guy was stabbed with a screw driver outside the hostel. I learned this after booking the hostel, but it probably wouldn't have changed anything. That kind of stuff happens all the time, its a hard world out there. Late one night after watching the World Cup opening game, we were attacked by this little kid who we had contact with earlier in the day. In the day time he was throwing trading cards and when one of
the British guys picked one up he tried selling the rest. I was wondering why we would buy these cards from him when if we really wanted them we could just wait until he threw the rest at us. When we saw him at night we had just picked up bottles of water for our trip. He jumped on the other British guys bottle of water with a kung fu death grip and would not let go. Eventually the British guy let go of the bottle. I was mad at first and then they put in prespective that it was only 50cents and the kid probably used it as his pillow for the night. I saw the truth that obviously this kid needed it more than we did, but clearly I am still bitter about it today. I saw the main square, saw the main temple where this girl followed me around trying to sell me bird seed. She kept describing how I could throw it to the birds, like I was unaware of what bird seed was rather than I had no interest in buying the bird seed. The temples were ok I suppose, I had nothing else to
do and I didn't really understand the details of the temple since it was all so new to me, but it was a fine afternoon. Then afterwards I went to the history museum, the first part when it talked about the Mongolian Empire from a long time ago was rather interesting, I lost interest when it was talking about more present times. Then I proceeded to the black market. I was expecting an our door market with a mix of Mongolian things and real but stolen western things. It was none of that. It was an indoor mall with cheap knockoff cloths and shoes. I'm not sure what was different about this market and every other store in city. Everything in this city was fake, I saw a Mercedes and questioned the validity of the car.
When we left early in the morning for the countryside of Mongolia our first stop was the old capital. We stayed the night in a Ger, similar to a tee pee, but not. We played soccer with some of the kids in the area and our guide walked us to all the souvenir stands in the city in case we wanted to buy
anything. The days were pretty much the same. We would drive for 3 hours, eat lunch, drive for 4 hours, ride some sort of animal, shown a souvenir stand, eat dinner, and then go to bed. Besides all the crap we had to go through it was completely worth it. One particular night there were five horses and and when you counted the guide we were one short so they borrowed the neighbors horse, which they said was a bit wild. This was the horse they chose to give me. I didn't think there was going to be a problem and they were just exaggerating, but I was wrong, this horse was crazy. The slightest noise made it take off, and the other people were on tame horses that you had to yell at and kick to move, so they spent the entire time yelling and my horse was the only one running. The guide had to walk perpendicular with mine to keep it under control. I say all that, but when I got off, this seven year old kid jumps on and makes this horse do whatever he wanted, so who knows.
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