GT1: Going to the Gobi

Today we left for the Desert Desert (since Gobi means desert...). We had arranged to be picked up in front of the Gandam Temple at 9:00, as the temple is right beside the guesthouse and 9:00 is a reasonable hour. So, at 9:00, our jeep arrived with our driver, Baatar Joe and our guide, Tseegi. Baatar Joe doesn't speak very much English, but proved to be very fun to have around nonetheless, and his knowledge of the terrain was very impressive. Tseegi is a 20 year old student who speaks Mongolian, Russian, English and Japanese (in order of proficiency). After introductions, we boarded the jeep and quickly went to the travel agency to pay the balance. Then we were off!

Our Russian jeep.

Once out of Ulan Bator, the roads become much less well.... road-like. They're more like trails, hence the need for our sturdy Russian Jeep. When lunch time came around, we stopped at some small sand dunes that had some horses grazing nearby. Before lunch, we explored the sand dunes and watched the horses. Very relaxing!

A village be passed by.


Some horses doing... erm... something?


Emily and Tseegi.


A bird (click on picture to enlarge).

Rhubarb!!!


The sand dunes and I.

The dunes and a nasty-looking sky.

Our lunch was very delectable. We had Kimbap, bread, sausage, many things to put on bread and vegetable to nibble on. This was followed by desert; a container filled with dried fruit and some candy. Yum!

After our dinner, we had some more time to explore. I came across a strange looking fenced-in area where they seemed to be doing experiments with... well.... pine trees!

Sign at the fenced-in area.


Baby pine tree?

Once lunch and exploration was finished, we headed to Kustai National Park, one of the last places that still houses wild ponies. I mean donkeys! Oh no! Horses....! Yea.... right.... (they looked more like donkeys to us, but don't say that to any Mongolian!!!)

Ironically, the only "wild horses" that we saw were in a fenced-in area for treatment!

After Khustai, we drove a few kilometers to setup camp. After setup, we went exploring once again while dinner was being prepared. We were rewarded by finding some semi-wild horses (most of the animals in Mongolia are semi-wild, since they are just left to roam in search of food).

The semi-wild horses and I.


The landscape.

During dinner, the park ranger came to our camp to tell us that we weren't suppose to be camping here. but it was alright anyway. We invited him to share our borsch, and he accepted. He even cleaned a sheep skull I found while roaming!

After supper, we decided to amuse ourselves with rocks. After some target-practice games, we built an impressive (if unstable) tower. I wonder if it's still standing?

Building....


...and done!

Graham, Emily, Tseegi and I concluded the night playing dice. And that's the end of day one of the Gobi Tour!

Day 2 in Mongolia

Day two began quite nicely. I woke up, ate breakfast, read a little and then went to explore. I went to the post office to buy myself a map of Ulan Bator as well, so that I could actually located stuff in the city.

I returned at lunch time, ate and then Emily and Graham walked in. They had spent the morning chasing after visas and at the tourist bureau. They had arranged a trip with Tseren Tours, which prides itself for providing "off the beaten path" tours, and wanted to know if I wanted to accompany them. I gladly accepted, so we headed to the travel agency (located adjacent to the State Department Store) to close the deal. On the way back, we passed by a really nifty marketplace to buy supplies for our tour.

The meat section of the market.

Since we returned to the guesthouse around dinner time, we were quite hungry, so we decided to head out to find some food. As Graham and Emily had already been in Mongolia for ten days or so, they already has a favourite (or at least convenient) restaurant. This place, where I have been quite a few times now, serves Mongolia "fast food", which is comprised of various dishes that all contain a generous portion of meat. Actually, the vegetable soup had more meat than vegetables. Surprisingly enough, it also had more meat than the meatball soup! Figure that one out!

Graham, Emily and I at the "Nat'l Mongolian Fast Food" resto.
It has another name, but it's in Mongolian...

We then returned to the guesthouse and decided to do something. Since they had never played dice, I taught them how to play 10,000. Much fun was had by all!

Exploration of Ulan Bator

As the title of the post suggests, I spent most of today exploring Mongolia's capital (and only real city), Ulan Bator. It houses approximatively half of the country's population, although this is only a ballpark figure, since many citizens of Mongolia are semi-nomadic. This makes for interesting elections (a topic which will be discussed later).

Anyway, I woke up and was served breakfast, which consisted of bread, butter, jam and an egg. Yummy! After that I proceeded to explore the city. Although it was raining 9which is quite rare in Mongolia), I was still in good spirits, because this place was totally unlike any other I have ever been in. The city looks like a mix between a third world country and a communist settlement, but with people dressed to the nine's in D&G, Tommy H and every other (rip-off) brandname clothing. I am just assuming that they are rip-off's due to the fact that China is just so close!

The most notable stop during my exploration was the state department store, which sells goods ranging from souvenirs, jewelry, clothing, groceries and even insurance! Then again, it does stand seven stories high!

The State Department Store.

Once I had returned to the guesthouse from my initial exploration, I met some of the hostel's other guests; a German, an Italian and two Scandinavians (I think that they were Norwegian) who were travelling together. They were actually just leaving for a national park to do some riding and camping.

After that, I continued to explore the city. Upon my return to Oyuna's (again), I met Graham and Emily, two ummm.... Scots? Well, Graham was born in London, but lives in Scotland. However, in town is mainly English, so that I don't have any trouble understanding him (Yay for me!). Emily is a native Calgarian how has spent the last decade of her life in Britain. They are actually on an eight month adventure, and were in the process of playing the visa game for China and India (which is much more complicated than it may seem).

Anyway, they had just returned from a hiking trip 2 days early, as the tent that they rented from Gaan has a leak in it. Actually, that is an understatement. The tent covers didn't actually fit on the tent. Furthermore, neither cover nor tent was waterproof, making for a rude awakening for the couple when it started raining at 6am. So, needless to say, they weren't happy campers...

Well, soon after we headed to bed. A good first day!

Random pictures taken during my exploration.

The day in limbo!

After a delightfully restful night in the departures terminal (seriously very comfortable! Perfect except for the announcements every 30 minutes, but after I was asleep, they no longer bothered me!), I headed to the check-in counter at 6am, as my Air China flight was departing at 8. However, upon arriving at the departure gate, a little sign written on paper said that the flight was delayed from 8am to 8 pm due to "bad weather". Apparently Beijing airport has been doing this a lot recently, even when there was no bad weather anywhere in the vicinity! Anyway, since I had some time to kill, I started chatting with some of the other people waiting around. This is how I met Ariell, Deidra and Tina. Then our luck suddenly turned for the better; Air China announced to us that they booked a hotel in Beijing that we could stay at for the day! So, with my new acquaintances, we left in the provided shuttle buses to the hotel, where they treated us to a really nice (and free!!!) Chinese lunch. After that, Deidra and I decided to do some shopping! Having been here before, Deidra suggested a department store for starters. Although we ended up at a more upscale department store at first, on our second try we succeeded in reaching our intended destination: the rip-off market (Ya-Show to be more accurate). Very interesting place for the bargain seeker, as long as you are willing to negotiate ferociously! After that little adventure, we opted to return to the (air conditioned) hotel for a little nap before dinner. So, all in all, we spent a very nice day in Beijing!

At 6:30, we left the hotel to return to the airport. We first had to check in again, but a small error was made; the first to check in had the wrong gate number on their boarding passes! Well, because of this and other lacks of organization on the airport's part, we only ended up leaving at 10:30pm and arriving about 1:00 in Mongolia.

I like how China insinuates that Taiwan is part of China
and therefore doesn't include it under "international"!


The check in line at 8:00.


Deidra, Ariell, Tina and I.

Although Chinggis Khan Airport is very small (especially in contrast to Beijing's giant structure), the service was very efficient. Once I cleared immigration, I proceeded to take a taxi to Oyuna's guesthouse. After knocking on the erm.... wall? door? (I'm still not sure what it is, but I'll post a picture at one point... ) Oyuna and Gaan, the guesthouse's owners, opened-up and greeted me as if it were a decent hour (which it really wasn't at this point). They apologized for not picking me up at the airport, which is definitely understandable since my flight was delayed for 12 hours, and then showed me to my bed with all courtesy. After a brief information session, which taught me all I needed to know about the facilities, I then (finally) went to bed.

Destination: Mongolia!!

Today is the day that I leave for Mongolia! Since Mongolian Air's flight booking (and website) were undergoing technical difficulties for the end of June, I was stuck with a transfer in Beijing. That would be quite alright, except that the transfer time is 12 hours... Ah well! At 6pm, I went to Incheon Nat'l airport and flew to Beijing, where I arrived at 8pm (Korean Air is simply wonderful, by the way!). So, since I didn't really want to go through the hassle of booking a hotel, I just decided to sleep in the terminal. It was actually very nice.

Oh, by the way, the new Beijing airport is absolutely huge. Just the "E" terminal has 56 gates, so imagine the other letters! They even have trains and buses to connect the different parts of the airport! Crazy!

The enormous airport (one room of many, many, many...)


My bed!


Sleep time!


Really cool statue located just before int'l departures.

Mongolian Embassy

I had some really strange luck today, so I just wanted to share.

First of all, the Mongolian Embassy is located in Seoul and only open from 9-12 weekdays for visas. So, the original plan was to wake up at 7:00 and then head over to the subway station nearest to the embassy (following the directions provided to me by my Korean friend) and acquire this visa. That way I could get back to Incheon to attend class at 12:00.

That's when things went all wrong. First of all, my alarm never went off; the battery died overnight! So, I woke up at 9:00, thinking "Oh shit!". So, I hurried off to Seoul with the intention of getting there right under the wire and missing class. So, I get to the subway station around 11:10, hop in a taxi and give the driver the directions. He doesn't know where this place is (joy!). So, he makes some phone calls and finally finds the place. So we drive and drive and drive. Guess what? My buddy gave me the subway station for the Chinese embassy, so we weren't nearly as close as we were supposed to be (still, the 20 minute ride only cost 7$, so big deal!). So, at the embassy at 11:30, the is a short lineup, but all is well since I have already printed and filled-out the application. I get to the desk and the lady informs me that they don't take cash (even though the website says that they only accept USD) and she gives me a form for a direct bank transfer. Great!

So, off I go to the bank (there was one near, so that was good at least). I enter the Hana bank (my bank), and the clerk asks me how much I wanted to transfer, in Won. Since the only rates that I knew of were in USD (and obviously outdated now) I just left the bank. So, I resolved myself to return another day. While standing in front of the bank putting away my papers away, a girl asks me if I was trying to apply for a Mongolian visa. I said yes. So, we talked, and she knew the exact rates since she had done it recently. Furthermore, she also suggested that I cross the street to use the other bank, as they don't charge for bank transfers of this type!

Wonderful! So, after thanking her profusely for her help, I quickly went to the bank across the street, transfered the money and ran back to the embassy. Only two people waiting in line (great!). So, I got to the desk, gave in my application and receipt of transfer and finito! 11:58!

To make things even sweeter, I exited the embassy and asked the Koreans standing outside whether they knew where the nearest subway station was. On guy told me to go to the main road and walk right. So, I went to the main street, and started walking. However, the same guy drives up and asks me if I want a ride, which was just so cool of him!

So, happy ending for this story!

Kanako, Seoul and more Noraebang!

This week Kanako, a friend of Remi's from Japan, came to visit Korea for a week. So, we went to Seoul quite a bit and even went to Noraebang. Twice! Here are some pictures.

Noraebang: Remi singing Marilyn Manson.




Lotteria (Korean McDonalds).


Krispy Kream (Bleurk....)




This one needs some explaining. We spent the whole day in Seoul and around 9:00 we went to see Indiana Jones. Afterwards, we went to the bus stop to wait for the bus, but it never came (they are supposed to stop only at 12:30; even the Koreans didn't know what was going on). So, since we were waiting for two hours or so, we got bored.