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Asia » Mongolia » Ulaanbaatar
September 12th 2010

Published: September 12th 2010

Beginning - UB to ZU
Does a women ever refuse dinner because you are not going to feed her every night of her life? Buy her a present: do you get it back because you are not going to be the new Santa Claus? So why do they so refuse to fuck on the same logic? Isn't a fuck better than dinner? Dick got sick of the slow game in Ulaanbaatar, and sick of everything else about the place, especially the other 'travelers' with their ludicrous hair and beards, full of haughty satisfaction for having sat on a train for six days and ending up in shithole. Monday at the station, he is told to come back on Tuesday at 8am. Tuesday 8:30, all the sleepers are sold out. He is offered 'hard seat'. 14 and half hours on 'hard seat'? Yeah… get out of town, we're all nomads here. Half an hour later, the Queen of the Mongols reestablishes contact, begging for the cock rejected four days before. Hard seat didn't seem that different from hard sleeper except that it was him and seven fat women between six beds. Dick had a bottle of vodka and some sausages. The fat women didn't look like vodka from the neck of the bottle types. Dick used his foreign maleness to stake out a top bunk where he sat like a hermit in his cave wondering how to get the vodka out his bag and into his system. These stupid Mongolian bottles have 'pourers' so he has to suckle rather than slug. Dick takes his backpack to the stinking toilet and fills his tea jar with vodka, leaving some floating leaves. Back in his garret he sucks vodka from his tea jar. As he is sucking the train jolts to a halt, the tea jar jolts from his hand, smacks one of the worthy dames on the shoulder and casts its contents on the floor. Let no one ever tell you that vodka doesn't smell. A gorgeous girl in a blue uniform mops up Dick's mess. Dick sleeps. The train jolts to a halt and dick is thrown off his bunk. He grabs at the fibre of the bunk, so only the bottom half of Dick's body escapes. In his struggle to stay aloft he boots a fat woman in the tit. There is a big commotion, but the whole train is a commotion because many people are precipitously on the floor. Dick eats sausage and wantonly sucks from the bottle until he sleeps again. At Zamyn Ud the next morning, Dick anticipates a relaxed breakfast of beer and buuz, but instead there is a great rush from the train like the Harrods sale, despite there being over two hours till the border opens. Dick has no choice but to rush with them.

Middle - ZU to EH
People shout, board random buses and jump in jeeps. Confusion is considerable. Dick knows not what to do until she shouts CHINA YOU! in his face.

HOW MUCH?

50! COME!

Dick is shocked: fifty is the anticipated price. Dick follows her. He would follow her anywhere: small, gorgeous, nonspecifically foreign and hard as nails. At a distant empty jeep she tells him to SIT. Dick sits, as if he had a choice. About twenty seconds later, the jeep is full and they are into a crazy race of death across deeply rutted fields. The human contents of the jeep bounce around like lottery balls, groping each other, screaming, trying to not break anything serious. The doll-like creature whoops and never takes her foot off the gas. The finishing line is not the border, but three soldiers in a field. One wears a peaked cap and aviator shades, looking a bit like Kim Il-Jong. KIJ is mobbed by drivers, all but one of whom are fat Mongolian men. KIJ distributes numbered tickets like the deli in Sainsbury's. Obviously she gets a low number, but the number doesn't matter, only the speed of obtaining because the race is on again, finishing amongst a mob of soldiers. The border is still out of sight and closed for another hour, but the undisputed Queen of the Queue doesn't waste that hour. Men queue up just be queue-jumped by her. She shouts, curses, smiles, rubs herself on things, sings a loud song about war, and without it being obvious how, we are at third in line. The undisputed King of the Queue is another uniformed, capped, KIJ-alike, this time in a cape. The King and the Queen don't get on so well. The King despises the Queen's attention. The King is furious with the various vassals who have eased her progress. The King releases Jeep 1 and Jeep 2 to the frontier. Arms akimbo, he turns his back on us and regards the misty horizon, blocking our progress. The Queen pops the clutch and butts the officer on the butt. It is clearly the funniest thing she has ever seen or done. All witnesses concur. We speed off, overtaking the laggards in front until navigating a sea of trucks and buses which are somehow there before us. She can squeeze the jeep through a space Dick could not get his cock into.

At customs Dick walks towards the door behind the other hurrying passengers.

RUNNING!

See Dick run. When they emerge in China her jeep is mêléed amongst many other vehicles. She tears her hair: China is no monarchy. Lost time is horrifically made up for in the ride into Erinhot. As they skid to a halt her finger singles Dick out.

YOU! BEIJING! GO NOW!

She points to the nondescript bus terminal. Dick throws himself from the jeep and is sprayed by mud as she disappears.

Dick wants to take the train to Hohhot.

End - EH to HH
Doing as he was told, Dick tries to go to Beijing: 200 RMB. Dick has 165. No ATM at Erinhot bus station. The typical Chinese transit operative dismissively wafts her finger to the West, including a left turn. Outside Dick encounters two of the bad hair and beard people, waving credit cards forlornly in the faces of the kind of people who hang around bus stations. Dick joins them. Fifty RMB for a taxi to the ATM. YOU ARE FUCKING INSANE, shouts Dick and speeds off in the direction of the previously wafted finger, turning left. After about 40 seconds he has found an ATM which does not accept his foreign card. Thirty seconds later he encounters two studious young men repairing the next ATM. Five minutes, they indicate. See Dick wait. Dick gets a beer and changes $40 instead.

Back at the bus station, the bus has gone. Next bus to BJ, 4pm, arrival 4am. Dick buys a ticket to Hohhot. He has the remains of last night's vodka, but cannot realistically suckle on a bus so buys some cognac, mixes them in the tea jar - looks like tea. Dick has seat 35: middle seat, back row. Dick is pleased not have 33, 34, 36 or 37. The first three hours are flat nothing with a flat nothing piss stop and the last hour sinusoidal mountain tracks with three metre visibility fog. Dick considers that maybe the vodka is a rip off: nothing like drunkenness is occurs.

Hohhot is cold and drizzly, nothing like he expected. When arriving anywhere new, leave the bus or train station asap and consider life and future actions from the hinterland. In the hinterland Dick sees that he has left his phone on the bus. See Dick run back to the dark and drizzly bus station. Back at the bus station, the bus has gone. He finds many helpful people, but it takes ten minutes to mime and draw his problem. Dick does not know his own phone number. Dick gives up and wanders amongst the scumbags, hustlers and overpriced hotels that surround the station. He needs an internet café but finds only hairdressers; needs a room but finds only touts. Cornered by two dark Korean women Dick agrees to look at their room: a brand new, immaculate twin with private bathroom, hot water and AC for $12 at the top of four flights of filthy stairs. Dick accepts the room. Having paid and debagged himself, he finds an internet Kismet on the floor below. Dick cancels his $10 dorm bunk in the hostel across town.

Epilogue
The next day in a shitty little eatery on the other side of town (8 million people) a little man in black tugs Dick's shirt sleeve. He pokes himself in the chest. Erinhot Erinhot he insists. It is none other than the conductor from last night's bus. Dick repeats his mime, draws his picture again. No phone, no pool, no pets. This is the real world.

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