内蒙古

[Editors Note: This is a very long post. ADD readers need not apply, pics are at the bottom. Also, when you leave comments (and please do, it makes me feel special) please leave your name so i know who you are]
Inner Mongolia
So, I had this entire week off from classes because it was a holiday for the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing was filled with damn tourist and it was impossible to do anything in the city. So some of my friends and I decided that it would be a great opportunity to get out of Beijing and do some traveling.
ON Wednesday my friends Marta (Spain) and Graxi (Mexico) went down to the train station to get some tickets for the next day. The ticket lines were enormous so Marta and I took a spot in line while Graxi went to the front to see some of the places we could go to. About three minutes later Graxi comes back and hands me a slip of paper, a one way train ticket to Baotou, Inner Mongolia. There are two sets of rules in China, the rules for natives and the rules for foreigners. Plus, you don’t wait in line when you’re with Graxi. The ticket cost about 55元 or about $9. And the only reason it was that expensive was because it’s a holiday.
So the next day fully equipped with a couple hundred 元 and two packs of communal cigarettes we boarded fifteen hour train to Baotou. But when got onto the train and found out seats we saw that the tickets we had bought were hard seats, thinly padded sitting tickets. Fifteen hours sitting across from a crazy Chinese lady who spat sunflower seeds on the table between us. This wasn’t going to work. Graxi went to go scope out the rest of the train while Marta and I broke into some hysterical laughter. You had to laugh, what else could you do? Luckily Graxi went and upgraded our tickets for an extra 65元 to the sleeping car. Thank god, the hard seat car was boiling hot and I was sure that Chinese woman was going to take a bite out of me at any moment.
The Soft sleeper gave us plenty of room to stretch out and relax for the trip. Marta had a huge guide of all of China that gave us suggestions for things to do in Mongolia and places to stay. Along the way we made a couple of friends with a young married couple and a some policemen who told us that it would be a better idea to go to Hohhot instead of Baotou. And that meant we got off the train three hours earlier so we were totally fine with that.
At 2:30 Friday morning we go off the train in Hohhot without a place to stay or any kind of plan for the weekend. Thankfully right outside the train station there was a nice hotel and we decided to splurge on a 100 元 a night room. The next morning we got up, bathed and went to make a plan for the day. There was a travel agent in our hotel, so we went down and arranged for an overnight stay out in the Mongolian plains. Mongolia is famous for miles of barren plains where you can go horseback riding. For 230元 a person we would get four meals and get to stay overnight in a traditional Mongolian hut. We took the offer and got a private car to drive us two hours out of Hohhot, through the mountains and out to the plains.
On the drive out Graxi introduced me to the Spanish term “mongolito” which basically means retarded, a joke that never got old, no matter how many times we used it. The drive out was mostly uneventful except for the style of driving. I thought driving in Beijing was scary, but it has nothing on Mongolian driving. At one point I leaned over to Marta and said “I didn’t realize this was a two lane road.”
“It isn’t” she replied “We’re just driving on the wrong side of the road” These people would pass a motorcycle who was passing a semi-truck while there was another car coming toward us. All on blind mountainous curves. People would drive in both lanes or drive on the wrong side of the road on a turn because they thought it was easier on their tires.
We were all glad to be out of the car and get to our compound. We ate lunch and watched them carve up some famous Mongolian lamb which was going to be served at dinner.
After some intense negations we got some horses to go for a two-hour ride. Unfortunately, Marta and Graxi had run out of RBM so I had to front them the money for the horses, which I didn’t mind but we were running dangerously low on money.
I demanded on a white horse, which made me look like a badass, and we started our journey through the plains. It was amazingly beautiful. Riding through the eternal desolate plains of Mongolia on horseback. Just miles and miles of rolling fields where nothing lives but domesticated horses and sheep. At several points we stopped and locals tried to sell us photos with sheep that they carried on motorcycles. At one point we went to a hut and had some hot milk. The others refused due to fear of melamine of poisoning but I’ve given up that fear a while ago. My host family insists I have a bowl of milk every morning for “nouriss” (aka nourishment). We learned how to say thank you in Mongolhua (hallahalla) and made our journey back. It was then that I started getting the pain, the shooting pain in my upper thighs that ran up my to my butt. Horse riding is painful. Our guide insisted that we galloped to get back in time that only exacerbated the pain. But it was still visually breathtaking and I could have ridden for hours more if I had the chance. But I was happy to get to back to camp.
It was starting to get cold and we were getting hungry. We sat down at dinner ready to fill ourselves on lamb. They brought down some not so appetizing dishes and we asked for lamb and the waiter told us a rack of lamb cost 430 元 (about $70), money we didn’t have. We were pissed, hungry and pissed. We spent the rest of the meal staring at other peoples lamb, just staring in lust. There were only two dishes that we considered edible and we ate them with horrific table manners. Marta reffered to it as our Stockholm Syndrome, eventually you start eating like a Chinese. Our table mates just looked at us vacantly during the meal. Graxi taught them a little bit of Spanish “Yo soy mongolito.”
It was the first time I ever left a meal in China not stuffed to capacity. All I wanted to do was go to the bathroom and go to bed. The toilets however were open squatter toilets. I couldn’t get myself to BM and decided to hold it until I got to a real toilet, or at least one with a stall. As I was walking back from the toilet a lone mare galloped right in front of me and I knew this trip was worth it. I have a special place in my heart for horses because I was born in the year in the horse. They are powerful and majestic and you can’t help but feel empowered when you ride one (no matter how much it hurts your ass).
Our hut was freezing. We slept on a concrete floor covered in cardboard and a sheet. Even with the three sheets they provided us with, I shivered all night. We stayed up telling stories and eating a whole bag of trail mix which saved us from starvation (thank you Aunt Pixie and Aunt Colleen). Probably one of the worst nights of sleep I ever had that was interspersed with some unusual and not pleasant dreams. One where Sirius was sick and one where I was in a Lindsay Lohan movie, not a good night. It was at about six in the morning that I first heard it. “pat-pitta-pitta-pit-pat”. It was starting to rain, and hard. When the others woke up we discussed all of our dreams and we concluded that Mongolia gave you fucked up dreams.
We sprinted to the food hut and ate on the scraps of last nights lamb. They were mocking us with that lamb. Then our waiter told us that the trip to another part of the plains was canceled due to rain. But our bus back to Hohhot wasn’t coming until three. We asked if we could go earlier but they told us “no, I think you should stay.”
Frustrated beyond belief we ran back to our sleeping hut in an attempt to get some more rest. I couldn’t. I listened to Madame Butterfly and played sodoku. I was cold and wet and miserable. I missed Hohhot, I missed Beijing but most of all I missed Albany. I wanted to hug my dog and sleep in my warm padded bed beneath my Turandot poster.
Three o’clock couldn’t have some soon enough and was loaded into a minivan with the family we sat with the night before who still insisted on staring at us the whole trip. On our way back we ran into this amazing fog as we went through the mountains. The fog went from beautiful to dangerous as it became so thick that we couldn’t see the barrier on the side of the road. I had never seen anything like it before. The only you could see in any direction was a think layer of moisture that couldn’t have given less visibility if it had been snowing. The driver still continued to pass on the blind turns no matter how much we pleaded that he not. We all light up. If we were going to down, we were going down with a cigarette.
We got back to Hohhot shaking but safe. All we wanted was a meal and a lift back to Beijing. WE found a McDonald, and let me preface this by saying that I refuse to eat at McDonalds in the US, but I have never been so happy to see the Golden Arches in my life. I got a Big Mac and a milkshake and was in bliss. It was like our embassy, we were home. “Is this heaven?”
“No, its McDonalds”
We went and bought a bus ticket back to Beijing for seven that night. We would get back around 2am in just enough to go to a club until closing to complete our epic journey. Eventually I manned up and used the squatter toilet in the bus station. I was proud of myself
We boarded the bus and I sat down next to a smelly mongolito who leaned on me the whole trip. I popped two Benadryl to get some shut eye and drifted into unconsciousness with “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” ringing in my ears.
I woke up with a start at around 11 and saw the bus had stopped and Marta and Graxi were gone. I was still groggy and was having trouble walking but I eventually found them. They were talking to the driver. We were about 150 kilometers from Beijing and the traffic was so bad that we it would be more gas efficient to stop. I didn’t understand, was this traffic all the way to Beijing? When would we get back? No one seemed to know. We got back on the bus and drove for about a kilometer and then we would stall for about five minutes, turn off the bus for about two minutes and then drive for another kilometer or so. This went on for about an hour before I got back to sleep again. Another night with terrible sleep we arrived in Beijing about six in the morning.
Without even saying goodbye to Graxi and Marta I caught a cab home and took a five hour nap.
All in all I spent about 800元, a little over $100. A bit more then I would have liked to spend but cheep nonetheless. It was terrible and wet and cold but we had a great time and I wouldn’t take it back if I could.
School starts tomorrow.
Here are some of my pictures from the trip













Marta with very friendly police officer















Horseback through the plains















Us in the plains














inside our hut

The freezing cold hut as we left.

Keep it real US
邓雍煌