mongolia

In China there seems to be very little violent crime. A fair amount of pickpocketing, etc, but not so much of the other stuff. So I headed to Mongolia this past weekend for some raping and pillaging as I didn't want my carnal instincts to go totally dull. I took Air Pillage from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar where Ben picked me up from the airport, and upon seeing him I instantly became jealous of his $15 super warm coat. But actually the weekend was much less cold and drafty than I expected. The people in Mongolia are still people and still require respite from the cold, so it was really ok. As long as I had long underwear on...

The first day we checked out some stuff in UB, and it immediately became apparent to me how much more Soviet than Chinese the city is. The language, the traditional dress, the big square in the middle of the city...all very Soviet...I guess it's just that the people appear more Chinese than Russian that made me expect more of a Chinese city. Anyway, we checked out the statue of the (evidently enormously obese) Chinggis Khaan. I recited the 26-page Wikipedia article I'd read on the man, nay legend, on the plane to Ben and informed him that 0.5% of men worldwide are related to Genghis the gang banger, and about 8% of Asian males. We went to a Buddhist temple, which was cool because I'd actually never been to a Buddhist temple before. Ben bought a trance khoomi CD (khoomi is throat singing, and doesn't sound a bit like it's coming out of a human), and it was awesome to hear Happy Birthday with a khoomi singer set to a trance beat. I love old meets new. At the last minute we heard about a traditional Mongolian instruments orchestra concert from one of Ben's friends. The concert was 100% Mongolian instruments, so mainly the horse-head fiddle and then other instruments I can't name. There was a khoomi singer and other soloists as well. They were all dressed in traditional clothing, which I would call "costumes" but Ben says they wear it on a regular basis. Check out the picture.

The next day we headed out to the country, driving through the ger districts of UB. 60% of the city population lives in gers, and kindly their coal heating produces a nice layer of smog over the city, which, let's be honest, doesn't compare to Beijing's (at least Beijing on a bad day). We kept going out to Terelj National Park, and were picked up by a herder driving an ox cart. We forded the river (never caulk the wagon), Ben got cholera, and now when you pass the spot in future games there's an RIP Ben headstone. We reached the herder's ger, and went in for tea. The Mongolians are huge fans of milk tea, just a combination of regular tea with some milk and (usually) salt. It was great the first time I had it. But after my 20th bowl (every family we went to see insisted on us having some...they're big on hospitality, by which I mean, force-feeding), I was really sick of it. I also think that the milk tea may have given me food poisoning that appeared at 10 PM the night I was leaving. That country milk was definitely not pasteurized (also unhomogenized, raw, in a recylable container)... ;)

The travel between ger/herder families was again via ox cart, which was great because travelling so slowly (~3 mi/hr) you can really absorb the silence and the beauty around you. Also, it was important to notice that the gers were, practically speaking, extremely far apart, which you wouldn't have noticed had you zipped in a car between them. We arrived at the next ger family, who had a very good looking son, what can I say, I have it for men in deels. The father, appropriately known as Bold (who knows how you spell that in Mongolian), was famous in the area for how much he could eat. The first family told me "He can eat 40 buuz! (dumplings)." Actually, it was communicated as flashing 10 fingers four times, pointing to a buuz, and telling Ben in Mongolian, "the next herder." We had some tea, then some more tea, then we helped milk the cow, blah blah, had dinner, and then played ankle bones, which is a game using pig ankle bones as dice, which made me feel like a fortune teller as we played it around a candle in a hut sitting on the floor.

The next day we woke up to the cow I had dubbed "Maggie" the night before as an ex-cow. I guess there was a reason she was being kept in the fenced area around the ger. Watching her being taken apart was somewhat horrifying. Also horrifying was watching them dismember her not only without gloves (and the son cut his hands on a rib at one point, giving him all the diseases Maggie had), but just wearing the same old deel they wear for everything else. Awesome.

We did some archery, went to another ger (oh, did I mention they insulate their barns and gers with cow poop?), ate some horse meat (didn't know it was horse meat at the time, thought it was beef) and then headed to a nice lodge where we lived in luxury for an evening and the next morning. We also rode horses the next morning, which was frustrating because the horses wouldn't listen to us. Headed back to UB, got dinner with Kyle Jaros, was sick all night from food poisoning, flew back to Beijing. Ben said being sick was retribution for my trip to Mongolia being too "easy." Evidently the cold was not as bad as it normally is. But don't worry, it was enough for a temperature-sensitive poser Californian like me.

So Mongolia was definitely one of the most different places I've been. It really was like being in a different era. One without electricity (though sometimes with cell phones that can be charged via a battery pack), where three generations live in a single room, and where traditional dress is not synonymous with out-of-the-ordinary.