trouble in xian

did you ever see, or have you ever read, "the world according to garp?" in the novel and the movie, garp, the main character (played brilliantly by robin williams) persuades his wife to buy a house that a small cessna airplane has just crashed into. "this house has been pre-disastered," he tells her. "what are the chances of ANOTHER plane striking this place?"

well, this trip around the world has been a little bit like that - interestingly bad things keep happening (to each and every member of the traveling party), but i still believe that everything will turn out okay. otherwise, i'd pack it up, pack it in, and return home right now.

so let's recap: annette had massive diarrhea (to put it bluntly, and why not this far into the game) for about a week, which greatly distracted her from the beauty and splendor of siberia. i had my iPod, GameBoy, camera, and travel clock stolen from my train compartment somewhere around ulan-ude, russia, which allowed me to concentrate a lot more on the beauty and splendor of siberia, although without an appropriate soundtrack blaring in my ears. amanda and i both got violently ill, threw up repeatedly, and spent days in our beds in our hotel rooms. i tripped and fell not once, but twice (once in a heat-induced daze as we trudged slowly towards a taxi across a dusty parking lot in mongolia, the other in the slick mud after a heavy rain in pingyao, china). the first fall resulted in a thick scab the size of four postage stamps on my right knee and some loose cartilage, it feels like, in my left knee; the second fall re-opened the injury on the right knee just as it was almost healed.

but it's got to get better from here, right? damn straight.

but first, it got a little worse.

we had a great time in pingyao, but that was not enough to keep my mom in asia. she had decided to come on this trip a few months ago, visions of the great wall and the terracota warriors and angkor wat dancing in her head. the first two of those were great - i've already described the fun we had at the great wall and an account of the terracota warriors is forthcoming - but she won't be around to see angkor wat, because a week in beijing was enough to convince mom to forget about the plane tickets she already has and book some to get home ASAP. it was a combination of things, she told me: the crowds, the challenges of traveling in a difficult country like china, and, more than anything, the general feeling that she didn't belong in the orient.

i started out trying to convince her that southeast asia was totally different than china, that it would be more relaxing in thailand, more kick-back, etc., but talking with amanda and mom's continued lack of fun made my attempts half-hearted, so i knew it would be for the best last week in pingyao when we sat down in an internet cafe and booked a flight home from bangkok to ontario via taiwan and los angeles.

i was bummed, i must admit, for i wanted her to have a great time more than anything - to see the great things i've spoken of and photographed, to share in the same exhilirations i've felt - but the decision to help her get home (to her husband, gene, who she missed incredibly from the time her plane took off from america) was made all the easier when i saw that she was spending so much of her time not having a great time.

we booked the tickets for her to leave from bangkok on sunday morning and set out from pingyao to xian via an overnight train on thursday night. this train trip was infinitely better than the horrendous, cramped, hot, stinky, third-class train from beijing to pingyao had been. it was a second-class hard sleeper train, with six bunks in each little open-air section, stacked three-high. i spent most of the first few hours of the trip, which began at 8 p.m., talking to a group of chinese men and women who were all teachers on a vacation retreat to pingyao, and my snoring, in the words of one of them, "shook the train" as we rolled down the track, i was informed the next morning.

xian was cool. we took an all-day tour out to the terracota warriors, which were made like eight billion years ago to protect an ancient emporer in the afterlife. each of the life-size figures has a different facial expression. they were discovered, buried underground in an area the size of about three football fields, by some chinese farmers in 1974. now, a giant hangar-type building has been constructed over the terracota warriors, and tourist after tourist goes through and checks them out, in awe of the scale and splendor and artistic skill necessary to create such a display.

amanda and i were particularly impressed with how there were special VIP photo sections available, where, for extra yuan, you could get much closer to the warriors and get better photos. "won't you feel sad if you get home and didn't get the picture you wanted because you didn't pay the money?" a sign near one of the VIP sections asked. i've got to give it to those chinese: they are really embracing capitalism!

we wandered through the three hangars, looked at stuff, and then wandered back 15 minutes to the bus parking lot, giving us ample opportunity to be hassled by stall after stall of merchanise hawkers. they could have built the parking lot right next to the hangars, but then we would have been denied the chance to (not) buy all the crap they were selling.

back at the guest house in xian, we were just getting ready for dinner and plotting out what time mom and i would have to leave for the airport the next morning when amanda discovered that she had (ominous music) lost her wallet!

so there it is: evil fate strikes again! she'd already been sick and throwing up, and now she was without credit cards or her ATM card, in frikkin' china! doh! but she stayed calm and i stayed calm (mom, eh, not so much with the calm...) and we discovered that she still had her passport (whew!) and, with a large loan from my mom and a small loan from me, would be okay until replacement cards could be issued.

we ate dinner and said our sad farewells. mom really, really enjoye getting to know amanda, who is one of my favorite people in the world, and i was sad to say goodbye to her as i sat packing my stuff in my room at half past midnight. she left, however, to go back to her room, and to prepare for the next day's journey, which would be taking her to a six-week kung fu school in a city somewhere south of beijing.

a little more than four hours later, i was awake, and i lugged my stuff into the guesthouse lobby at two minutes after 5 a.m. mom was already there - having been up and worrying all night about the flight to bangkok, and we set off in the dark rainyness of the pre-dawn chinese morning towards the airport and our flight to thailand.

pingyao pix

here in bangkok, chillin' like a villian...i'm trying to get a vietnam visa so i can go there in a few days - alone. which is part of a longer story, one of multiple misadventures, which i shall relate to you in the next posting. but for now, here's some cool pix of the good times we had in pingyao...

ode to pingyao

we left beijing
and those pictures of mao
and took a long train ride
down to pingyao

it's an ancient, old town
in a province called shanxii
and it was really really cool
for us weary travelers three

there's three in our party
down from beijing's four
because annette split for shanghai
and is with us no more

i told you of the train ride
and the fun that ensued
but it was worth it to get to pingyao
where there's cool stuff and good food

a fourteenth century city
mainly built within a wall
and the japanese never destroyed it
they left it standing tall

temples and small alleys
shops and bikes and wares
it was a nice relaxing place
for my mom to lose her cares

for beijing had been stressful
mom's not the big-city kind
so kick-back relaxing pingyao
put her in a relaxed state of mind

and we liked it too,
amanda and me
we had a great time there,
us travelers three

three days we spent
and met many nice folks
and i impressed all the locals
with my impressions and jokes

so more on pingyao later
'cause this net place is busy
and people are waiting for this computer
and nothing rhymes with "busy"

oh well. i'm out. when i have more time, i'll post pictures of the fun we had in pingyao. it was great - lots of really nice people. now we're in xian, china for a few days. terracota warriors tomorrow. more later.

peace. out. word.

ben

regarding comments, by the way

i don't know if it's a communism thing or what, but the whole time we've been in china, neither amanda, annette, nor i have been able to look at our blogs or read the comments people are posting. we can get in to type, for some reason, but we can't view the finished products. i don't know why, and we've now tried in various internet places in various cities. so, in summary, i am currently unable to respond to or even read comments. if you are sending questions, please don't think me rude for not getting back to you...

keep it real,

ben

the long road to pingyao

with the hustle and bustle of beijing getting to us, and having seen most everything we wanted to see in the chinese capital, our traveling party split up sunday night and headed in opposite directions. actually, annette will be waiting in beijing another day before heading east by train to shanghai, from where she will wing it to chicago, and finally back home to minnesota. amanada, mom, and i, however, found ourselves in the beijing west train station on sunday night, tickets in hand for a trip of indeterminate length to pingyao, a cool old (ancient, actually) town with a 14th-century wall around the city center and lots of cool old buildings preserved within the wall.

we're here now, and we arrived just in time. another few minutes, and i think mom would have *definitely* have had enough of this trip. can't say i blame her, though: it was one of the more challenging train trips i've ever been on. consider this: we rode 12 hours packed into a train that made lots of local stops, and it was hot every time it stopped, and people were yelling in chinese lots of the way, and there were 128 people sitting just in our carriage, plus many more standing along the way. the train left an hour and a half late, so it didn't roll out of beijing until almost midnight, and arrived here at mid-morning. oh well - at least we only paid 43 yuan (about six bucks) for our tickets.

after such a journey, mom was understandably frazzled, but i think (hope) that this place will have a calming effect on her, because it's had one on me so far, and it is refreshingly different than beijing.

the trip was rough, no doubt, but mom and i were touched by random acts of kindness that we witnessed/benefited from. for instance, mom made her way into the carriage a few minutes ahead of me and amanada, who were lollygagging on the platform. a kind young man lifted mom's very heavy rolling duffel bag onto the racks above the seats for her, and when she was hot and trying to fan herself, he opened the window for her. he had a kind smile and i bet he was very nice. his girlfriend or wife or whoever slept with her head in his lap most of the way, and then, when we finally arrived in pingyao, the young man jumped up and pulled down her bag before i could even get a chance to do it.

we've seen many acts like this in china - people going out of their way to help me or mom or amanda or annette. but on the other hand, we've seen lots of not-so-chivalrous goings-on, like how if there was a husband and a wife on the crowded train, the man would sit while the woman stood most every time. that part, well, eh, not so good.

i slept as best i could on the train. the window next to me stayed open the whole way, which was all the better for the chinese guy across from me to surreptitiously sneak smokes when he thought the conductor wasn't looking. there were smoking areas at both ends of the carriage, but honestly, we were so packed into the train that it would have been hard for him to get there. using a look of facial disgust, however, i did persuade him to hold his lit cigarette outside of the window, instead of trying to hide it under the table between me and him, where i was in constant fear that he would inadvertently set my leg hair on fire.

i slept for five or ten minutes or a time, so it was a welcome relief when we arrived in pingyao and there was a lady there with a sign with my name on it (first and last, both spelled correctly, no less) to take us to the guesthouse. we loaded our luggage and ourselves onto a pair of motorcycle rickshaws (amanda and mom on one, me on the other) and set off across the cobblestone streets towards one of the five entrance gates spread around the old town walls. it was a fun ride, but vehicles weren't allowed past a certain point within the walls, so we had to wheel our luggage the final spurt.

but it was worth it, because the guest house is wonderful. like i said, all of the buildings in here are old, like 14th century. but our guesthouse has been retrofitted with modern restroom facilities (of the western variety - no squat toilet!) and a bed in my room that is (honestly) 6 feet by 10 feet. it is great. i've got to get one at home.

the rooms of the guesthouse (we got three singles - $14 apiece) and, well, pretty much the entire town, are covered in elaborate carvings and hand-painted scenes of ancient china, of concubines and emporers, peasants and oxcarts, temples and processions. the rooms are spread around a central courtyard which is filled with plants and has a big brass pot in the center of it in which swim lots of little goldfish.

we'll be staying here for a few days before heading out to xi'an and the terracotta warriors on wednesday or thursday. mom enjoyed our walk around the city in the afternoon (before a torrential thunderstorm rolled in, brightening the late afternoon sky with lightning). amanda and i are enjoying it, too. it's a good respite from beijing, and a great place to kick back and read a book before carrying on with the trip. they're even helping us book train tickets onward to xi'an.

and this time we'll get the expensive ones.

what a grand, spectacular wall they have here! great, even...

photos to accompany this blog entry can be found on the "chinese madness" entry from a day or two ago. enjoy the writing, then peruse the pix...ben

i was surprised when my mom told me, seven or eight months ago, that she would be interested in getting a passport and leaving america for a few weeks. it turns out, however, that among the places she's most wanted to see all her life have been china's great wall, the terracotta warrior in xian, and angkor wat near siem reap, cambodia.

we checked the great wall off that list yesterday; the other two shall be similarly completed within the next few weeks.

i'd like to add that i am uber-proud of my mom for being here. she arrived tuesday afternoon and we've had 4.5 days here already in beijing, and there've been some cultural hiccups (to be expected), but she's hanging in there and has already shown a good amount of gumption just in coming here at all. i mean, china is not the easiest place i've been to before. it's not like her first international trip was to france or somewhere like that: it's very, very different here, and it means a lot to me that she came here, and that she's doing better every day, and hopefully making great memories that will last a lifetime.

mushy stuff aside and back to the story. we opted for a package tour from our hotel yesterday morning, so a minibus driver picked us up just before eight in the morning. we set out to pick up a few more tourists: a young dutch couple and five australians. we fought our way through the brual beijing morning traffic, all the while hearing interesting tidbits about the city, both past and present, from tony, our heavily accented but very knowledgeable guide.

these tours are a bit of ruse, in that they offer air conditioned comfort and whatnot all for one affordable price, but you also have to stop at predetermined shopping stores, usually government-owned and sponsored, to shop for jade or silk or other knick-knacky stuff that i could care less about. oh well, the stops weren't for that long - and i'd brought a book - and mom ended up buying a cool jade christmas tree ornament that will always reminder her of the time she was, for some odd reason, in china.

we stopped for awhile at the emporers' tombs, where leaders of the past had been laid to rest for millenia, guarded by huge, elaborately detailed stone animals and guardians. it was already quite hot and humid at 10 a.m. and i was dripping sweat by the time i'd walked the 1.5 mile pathway, covered by weeping willows from which emited the sounds of thousands of unseen insects. i was happy when, at the conclusion of this section of the trip, the driver said we'd have time to rest before our next stop, as the drive would take an hour and a half.

we ate lunch after the second of the two predetermined stops at government stores and didn't make it to the great wall, about 120 KM northeast of beijing above a small town called matinyahu, until 1:30 p.m. matinyahu was further away, but the guidebooks and online all said that it was preferable to the more heavily touristed parts of the wall most close to beijing, near the city of badailing.

we parked at matinyahu and the guide told us to be back to the bus by 3:30, so after all that driving and forced shopping, we only ended up with two hours at the wall. but that was actually enough, considering how tired the climb made me.

i'd like to report that i jogged with ease up to the great wall of china, which ran along the peaks of the mountain in the matinyahu section, but the truth is much less impressive. in fact, it's downright pathetic, although i do take some pride in the fact that i made it at all.

not to the top, mind you, but to the ropeway station. in my defense, the station was like halfway up the mountain,and the pathway leading to it was paved with very uneven cobblestones, and it went up and up and up, and on and on and on, at like at a very steep angle. i had to pause a few times on the way up, and many people passed me by, and my 55-year-old mother was waiting for me at the top of hte mountain by the time i'd huffed and puffed my way up there, moving slowly, like a semi truck ascending a steep grade in low gears at a slow speed, but i made it.

i was pouring sweat by the time i reached the base of the aerial tramway station, and was quite nonplussed when i found that it had four flights of stairs to get to where you board the ropeway. i chatted it up with some guys from an egyptian tour group who had also had their asses kicked by the walk up to the station (bear in mind that the fitter among visitors were hiking half an hour up a zillion stairs to the top of the mountain).

my knees were killing me and my pulse was beating pretty good as i rode up five minutes in the cable car, over pine forests, towards the wall, which snaked away over distant peaks in both directions. then i got to the top and found -- guess what! -- more stairs! darn! i really need to hit the stairmaster when i get home, because i was dying as i leaned against the great wall and looked for my mom. i found her quickly, however, and she told me she was proud of me for making it because regardless of my fatness, it was a good haul up to the station.

the wall itself was spectacular, but you've seen it before, and i'm getting tired (nearly midnight here), so i'm gonna cut this entry off pretty soon. mom and i took some photos, admired the views, talked about how the wall had taken 900 years to build and stretched for thousands of miles, and then we took the ropeway back down.

coming down the mountain wasn't as bad as going up had been, although i had some pretty good jelly legs going by the time i made it (without tripping, much to my delight) down to the parking lot, as trucks that go slowly up grades must also use a lot of breaking power to keep the load under control on the way down.

all in all, a great day. anytime you can see something like the great wall, it's a good day, but more than actually seeing the wall, i liked the look of excitement i saw on my mom's face as we explored it. it made all the climbing, all the stairs, all the sweating and sore knees, more than worth it.

i'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

"i knew all that eating would pay off someday!"

a suggestion from alert, long-time reader scott andrews led to an incident in the forbidden city the other day that enabled me to:
a)use my capitalism skills to earn some money here in a communist country
and
b)horrify my mother.
so it was kind of like killing two birds with one stone!

as you may have noticed if you know me, i am a bit on the chunky side, a fact which is not lost on, oh, say, *everybody* in asia. it started years ago with cute little japanese grandmothers coming up and hugging my buddha-esque belly and saying i was a good soul, and has evolved into fan club branches in thailand, nepal, malaysia, mongolia, and any other asian country where there are crowds of people who are more then willing to gawk, stare, and photograph a chunky brotha.

it's not so bad in big cities, where the local populace may have had previous exposure to super-sized americans, but at places that draw out the yokels (see the nadaam festival entry from a few weeks ago), the cameras end up a-clickin'.

people were taking pictures of me right and left at the forbidden city, which is one of china's biggest tourist draws. it was where generation after generation of emporers and concubines lived for thousands of years, inaccessible to the public until the 1920s. it has all sorts of halls and pavilions and carved figures and guilded roofs and stuff like that, but i was a bigger draw than any of that, and i decided that all these camera-bearing chinese shouldn't get away with pictures for free, so i started charging one yuan ($1 = 7.5 yuan) for a photo, three for two yuan.

at first it was a trickle. i was surprised and shocked when the first person actually understood what i was saying and took a one-yuan note from his pocket before posing next to me. the next one came a bit later, and then another, and then another, and then another. it got really intense in front of the hall of eternal enlightenment, or something like that, when people were actually thrusting money at me, and i was making change for larger bills, and one guy paid 10 yuan for 10 different poses with me (quite comical).

this went on and on for a good 15 minutes - i kid you not. my mom and annette just stood back and watched the semi-circle of people around me, shouting something about being next (i couldn't tell - my mandarin's still not that good)...my mom was cringing the whole time, though, especially when i yelled out "i knew all that eating would pay off someday!"

as quickly as the tempest had begun, however, it ended. the maelstromthe ebb and flow had come and gone, leaving me with a shirt pocked bulging with crumbled up yuan and a lone US dollar from a guy who really wanted a photo but didn't have any one yuan notes. including the dollar, i made approximately 52 yuan (about seven bucks) for my work, and all i had to sell was any sense of pride that i had left!

it was very hot and humid, as is normal in beijing in the summer, and my throat was parched from talking and laughing so much. fortnately, we soon came upon a section of the forbidden city that i referred to as "the palace of refreshments," where i purchased three bottles of ice water and a frozen yogurt (orange - delicious), happy that i had earned the money myself, right there in the middle of all the madness.

Chinese madness!

So busy of late that i fear i am slipping behind on the ol' blog, but i intend to rectify that situation sometime soon...in the meantime, here's some cool pix of our first few days in beijing, where we've been joined by a special guest star on the magical mystery tour -- my mom, making her international debut after 87 years of not leaving the united states! sorry, ma...hee hee!

beijing

arrived in beijing this morning after flying from chinggis khan international airport in ulanbaatar to tianjin international airport in tianjin, china. from there, we took a 100 KM bus ride (free with our plane tickets!) into central beijing, where we were dropped off in the middle of a city busily preparing for next summer's olympics. they should just put a giant "under construction" sign over this whole mutha. there are so many new expressways going up all over, and so many new skyscrapers, some rising from the ground at odd, eye-catching angles, bursting forth. not that you can see much of this from any distance because the air quality here is atrocious. if i were an olympic athlete planning on being here in 2008, i'd start training now by smoking a pack or two each day.

we ate lunch at pizza hut and then taxied it over to the guesthouse i set up online a few days ago; we all fell asleep through the early evening. now amanda and i are at a smoky internet cafe (where i'd bet access to sites like "freetibet.org" are blocked) and annette is...somewhere. my mom gets here tomorrow afternoon; she's probably waking up in california right now, freaked out of her head that she's gonna fly from ONT to san francisco to beijing, half a world away from everything she's ever known. but she doesn't have anything to worry about. it's not that strange: i'll be there when she gets off the plane, and there's pizza hut, and the transformers movie is playing at the theater below this internet cafe.

adios.

not a ger-reat time!

after nearly a week in the dilapidated concrete sprawl that is ulanbaatar, amanda, annette and i set off last friday for the vaunted mongolian countryside. we had a hired driver courtesy of zaya, the way-cool hostel owner. his name was tajeek and he was the same guy who had taken us to the nadaam festival's horseback riding event the day before (see other entry coming soon).

we drove for a few hours across roads that may never have seen better days and were certainly not recommended for the weak-of-stomach at this juncture. the four-wheel-drive toyota land cruiser bounced along, the driver humming to himself and sometimes singing "i just called to say i love you" as he dodged potholes.

the landscape was rolling hills of the kind that you'd see in the tehachapi mountains east of bakersfield on highway 58 in california as you head towards the mojave desert. they were covered evenly in a velvety green grass, with cattle, sheep, horses and goats gathered here and there, wherever there was water. mongolia has 14 times as many animals as people, i was told.

way out in the middle of nowhere, as we made our way eastward, or maybe it was westward or possibly even southernly, we'd come across gers, the traditional homes of mongolia's nomadic people. they are those round houses that can be put up and taken down as the seasons change. they have latticework frames, a waterproof covering, and a stove in the middle. they looked like little mushrooms as we'd come across them scattered here and there, sometimes close to what passed for a highway, sometimes way back at the edge of the crest of a hill.

we drove for six hours til we hit the spot. the beat was bumping and the girlies was hot. no, wait. that was what was playing on the ipod in my mind, since my real ipod had been stolen a week prior on the train from ulan-ude, russia.

we drove through changes in the landscape. alpine forests began to dot the distant hill ridges, then grow closer to the road. the terrain became rocky, with huge boulders (many of them with names in mongolian culture) all around us. we entered terelj national park and drove for awhile longer.

tajeek stopped for us at a few different places. at one locale, the girls were gonna ride camels, but it started pouring, so we decided to wait for later. we stopped at a collection of piled rocks that marked a shaman site, where tradition dictates that you walk around said pile three times clockwise, throwing fermented milk onto the pile and making wishes. i bought a cool hat and a wall hanging of chinggis khan.

turtle rock was a place where a rock the size of an office building was balanced precariously atop some other rocks. you could climb up into the crevices of it. annette did so while i searched for shelter as it began to pour again - and i hadn't brought a jacket of any sort.

eventually, we arrived at our tourist ger gamp. it was in a valley surrounded by majestic boulder-y peaks. there were about a dozen gers, each with actual beds in them, and a nice, enclosed, sit-down restaurant in the middle of the complex. we lugged our stuff through the pouring rain into our assigned ger and ate lunch in the restaurant.

after that, there wasn't much to do. amanda explored, annette journaled, i read a book and chatted it up with a group of dorky taiwanese tourists. they had come to this far-off ger retreat place dressed for a business meeting, and they had a film crew documenting their every move. i assumed they were on some sort of posh, expensive vacation and they'd each receive a commemorative DVD at the end of it.

they were all in the restaurant that night when we ate dinner. i don't remember what amanda and annette had, but i'll never forget what i had (mutton dumplings and vegetables) because, come six in the morning, it call came rushing back up at me.

have you ever had that feeling that you were gonna throw up and then, before you could do anything, you'd thrown up? that was me, on the floor of the ger, at a bit past six saturday morning, as amanda and annette slept a few feet away.

why was i on the floor? well, i'd disassembled the bed the previous night before turning in. the lonely planet guidebook had said tourist gers might not be comfortable for "those built like sumo wrestlers or NBA players," and they were right. sitting on the edge of the bed friday afternoon, i'd felt the slats underneath the mattress groaning, so i'd taken my bed apart, piece by piece, and stacked the wooden frame against the wall of the ger. i'd placed the mattress on the floor and gone to sleep on it at about half past eleven.

so there i was the next morning, on the floor, whimpering, trying to figure out if i should wake up amanda and annette before the smell did. fortunately, it was not very thick vomit, just mainly water. like you wanted to know that. i leaned the mattress against the wall and sat on one of the other bed for a few hours as the sun came up.

the plan had been to stay at the ger for two nights and three days, but i knew i wanted to go back to ulanbaatar. when amanda and annette awoke (the dreaded smell had never been a factor), i told them what had happened and we agreed to go drop me off and they'd go on their way.

we packed up but i didn't feel like moving, so the girls tried to ride horses at half past nine. but there were none available, so they just ended up waiting for awhile while i sat on the side of one of the assembled beds, waiting for the next heaving to begin.

everything i drank came rushing back up a few minutes later. i was so thirsty, but i discovered the unfortunate inability to keep anything down after a few minutes. i threw up in the ger again, all over floor where my bed should have been, and a few more times outside in the grass.

we left at about 11 and headed back towards ulanbaatar on those bumpy-azzzzz roads. i was worried about how that would treat my stomach but i made it okay. we stopped at the place where rainstorms had kept the girls from camel rides the day before, and while they were riding camels, i watered the grass with more heaving hurls. i felt miserable.

back at the apartment by one p.m. tajeek, amanda and annette set out for another national park in some other direction and i went to sleep for 17 of the next 22 hours. the girls ended up coming back late that night since lodgings at the place they'd gone to had been prohibitively expensive and they'd seen all they wanted to see. i felt somewhat better the next day and even better today. still haven't been able to eat like normal, but everything's staying down now, at least, and a little less food never did me any harm.

so if you find yourself at a ger camp in terelj national park east (i looked on a map) of ulanbaataar, mongolia, bring your camera, because it's really pretty. but don't bring your visa card, 'cause they don't take it. and don't order the mutton dumplings, because they might make you throw up eleven times, like they did to me. :)

It will be hard to top this as a highlight of the trip.

Amanda, Annette and i sat eating diner on the outdoor balcony of a cafe called chez bernard here in ulanbataar two nights ago. it was about nine p.m. and the sun was almost down, and the traffic had eased up on peace boulevard, the city's main street running in front of the place.

we'd arrived by train that morning at 6:20 and been taken to our rented apartment by a lady named zaya, through whom i'd set up accomodations a few months back. on the ride over (she runs a very thriving hostel business with multiple locations throughout the city and a fleet of vehicles in which her drivers ferry foreigners out into the countryside) in her honda CRV (same car as me - yeah!), zaya warned us about the darker side of ulanbataar. she said that HALF of her guests end up being pickpocketed. she said that they all think they know what they're doing, or that they're experienced travelers, but half of them still end up coming back to her office, crying that they've lost passports or credit cards.

the three of us had kept us in mind when we'd walked to the restaurant, leaving our passports (which had been on our bodies at all times in russia) in the apartment and carrying as little as possible with us. we sat and ate our meals and relaxed in the comfortable dusk, which made this relatively ugly city seem very nice indeed (when the communists controlled UB for 75 years, they forbade any money from being used on beautification projects).

the balcony had five or six tables on it, most of them filled with tourists. each table had a chair or two around it, and these two mongolian guys climbed the stairs to the balcony and began looking around. one of them started talking to me and annette in mongolian, motioning to an empty chair at our table and seemingly asking if he could take it. as we both were indicating that it would be okay, amanda screamed that the other guy was grabbing her purse from where it lay by her foot!

in a flash, annette dove at the guy as he held the purse like a running back holding a football and tried to squish his way between the customers and back towards the stairway. he found it hard to do this with annette wrapping herself around his legs and dragging him to the ground as she fell out of her chair. i jumped up and blocked his way. amanda grabbed her purse. as the guy was squirming free from annette, i grabbed him around the neck from behind in a bear hug and then yanked both of his arms behind his back. he squirmed for a while and i wondered what would happen if i were to bash him against the brick wall to my left a few times. i don't know how long i held him for -- not more than ten or 15 seconds -- but no restaurant staff were rushing out to help and no police seemed to be nearby, so i let the guy wiggle out of my grasp. he and his partner - who had been standing, dumbfounded probably, next to me the whole time - took off down the stairs. i wish that one of us had been taking pictures of the event; i would not be above re-enacting it before we leave with a pair of paid mongolian men as stand-ins for the thieves.

annette was down on the ground still, having fallen and hit hard but fortunately having avoided the large concrete block that served as a base for shade umbrellas during the day. hitting that in her fall would have been most unfortunate, and i couldn't help but think of "million dollar baby" as i returned to my seat.

the scene was kind of like after a fight in an old-west saloon. everything just went back to normal. no one came to talk to us. i apologized to the germans sitting next to us for disturbing their meal. we noticed that, in the fracas, the thief had lost his sunglasses and his jacket! ha! serves him right. we went back to our meal, laughing about what had just happened, counting our blessings, and wondering how much this story (which has been related here in its simplest, purest, truest form) will be embellished as time goes on.

Comments! Comments! Comments! I haven't been getting many on this blog, and maybe it'll help that I now changed it to the more convenient "you don't have to be a member to comment" setting. If you're out there reading this, I'd love to hear from y'all.

Ben

Waiting at the border.

i woke up at noon as the train stopped at the russia-mongolia border. it said in the guidebook that we would be there somewhere between five and 11 hours! it was hot and bright outside. all the british and australian tourists offered more condolences regarding my missing electronic equipment, but i'd already put it behind me as i anticipated ordering a new camera from amazon and having my mom bring it with her when she flies out to join our cavalcade of fun next week in beijing.

five to eleven hours? for passport checks? wtf? well, it was true. i didn't know where we were, except that it was a long railyard with freight cars of various types along all the other tracks except for where our two carriages set on the rails nearest the station. apparently the rest of the train had detached from us at some point, leaving just these two carriages (and no locomotive) to wilt in the summer siberian heat.

nothing much exciting happened. annette was on her fifth day of stomach problems, so she shuttled back and forth to the bathroom in the station until the lady in there ( you have to pay six or seven rubles to use the urine-smelling facilities in russian train stations) was on a first-name basis with her. amanda and i wandered around, over to where there was a little makeshift market in a series of tin sheds out behind the station. they were selling quartered pigs (as in legs with hoofs still attached) and bootleg phoenix suns uniforms and - thankfully - water and ramen and fruit and stuff.

noon became five after hours of conversation about midgets, and birth defects, and why do i like star wars so much, and stuff like that - the things you talk about when you've been waiting all day in a hot, dusty russian train station and the customs officials have not yet made an appearance.

but then, shortly after five, we were all herded back into our sweltering compartments onboard the train, because it was time for the russian customs and immigration people to do there thing. i wanted to ask them what the hell they'd been doing the past five hours, but they were stern and scary, so i kept my mouth shut.

we finally rolled out of the town at half past seven. i filmed the sunset out the window, but the carriage attendant came running at me and seemed to indicate that i shouldn't be filming in this sensitive border area of rolling green hills and stagnant ponds. i put my camera away and noticed that there were electric and barbed-wire fences running alongside the track, so it was an area of some strategic importance, apparently.

half an hour down the line, the mongolian customs and immigration people came on board and did their thing within half an hour, and then we were on our way, finally out of russia, and rolling onward through the night towards ulan baatar. we got here at six this morning, were met by the lady who runs the guesthouse at which we're staying, and we all took naps until the afternoon. tomorrow we're gonna head out of the city to soak in the natural beauty of mongolia.

Robbed! Robbed, I was! By no-good thieves, I tells ya...they came in the thick of night, as our train rolled along from irkutsk to ulan-ude, and snuck into my compartment, a whole stealthy group of them (deadly ninja assasins, i think, but i was fast asleep, so i don't know for sure), and they took my stuff.

they were able to take my beloved iPod, my camera, my gameboy advance, and the five dollar travel alarm clock that i'd taken with me everywhere since i first started road-trippin' around the USA 14 years ago for two main reasons: i am a very heavy sleeper, and i had a compartment of my own thanks to a suggestion by amanda and annette and a little bit of old-fashioned cash bribery on my part.

so we were in irkutsk, where this journal last heard me writing to you, two or three days ago (i've lost all track of time after spending eight of the past nine nights on trains), and we were preparing to roll out of the station at about 9 p.m. amanda and annette were being vocally demonstrative in anticipation of their presumed displeasure with the night's sleeping arrangements, lamenting the fact that they would be subjected once again to me, or, as they sometimes call me, the Great Snoreasaurus. we lugged our luggage into our compartment, sweaty and worn out because it's like a million degrees in the compartments, and they set out while i sat down and closed my eyes for a minute. they returned a few minutes later with a suggestion: why don't you go sleep in one of the empty compartments down the way, they asked me. i was up for it: if there was an empty compartment, why not let me use it? that way we'd all have a bit more room and the deep bass of my snoring would bounce off empty walls instead of the awakened forms of my near and dear friends.

i trudged down the narrow hallway with my stuff until i got to an empty compartment. i organized my stuff and was enjoying sitting there, watching the dascha (russian summer houses on the outskirts of a city) roll by as we chugged our way (in an electric train) out of irkutsk. the car attendant lady came into my room a few minutes later to check my ticket. she spoke no english, but indicated that i'd have to go back to my proper carriage. i had been in the midst of separating out some ten-ruble notes to keep as cheap souveniers for the folks back home, so i motioned towards the empty berths all around me and said (in english for some reason) why can't i stay here? then i raised an eyebrow and offered her the wad of ten-ruble bills (26 rubles = one dollar, by the way). she laughed dismissively since i was offering her like only a few dollars. a cool breeze brushed against my sweaty forehead and i really wanted to stay in that room, so i opened my wallet and busted out a 1000 ruble note (about $40), which cinched the deal. she grabbed the money and hurried off to her little office compartment to check on which compartments would be empty for the remainder of the two-day trip into ulan bataar, mongolia.

i ended up in the compartment next to the one i'd been in, so i had to move all my stuff again, but i did so willingly. amanda and annette came by and chatted for a few hours and before we knew it, it was three in the morning and we were all tired. they went back to their compartment, happy i'm sure that they'd be getting a good night's sleep, and i went to bed in mine, not knowing that the compartment's sliding doors had locks on them.

a few hours later it was morning and i was awakened by the carriage attendant, who was motioning for me to gather up my stuff - and fast! she grabbed some stuff, i grabbed some stuff, and i assumed i was being sent back to amanda and annette's compartment. as i walked with my backpack and whatnot down the hall, however, i saw that i was being moved into a compartment two doors down. apparently, the one i'd been in was being used after all. a dozen british and australian tourists got on the train and talked and talked and talked, really loudly. i tried to go back to sleep, by they just kept carrying on about this and that right outside my door. i sat up and saw that my headphones were sitting on the table in the middle of the compartment, between the two bottom berths, but the ipod that should have been attached to them was nowhere to be found! fudge, i said aloud. i searched for it all throughout the stuff that we'd haphazardly thrown into my new compartment, but to no avail. then i noticed that i couldn't find my camera, game boy, or the little clock. fudge, i said again, and set out to report the loss to the carriage lady. i used my mighty skills of pantomime to update her on the situation, and she accompanied me back to the compartment and started looking through my big rolling duffel bag and my backpack, as if i'd stuffed the items in there amongst the dirty clothes.

some of the british people overheard the commotion and sauntered by to see what was up, and i heard them saying "it appears our american friend here has been robbed!" another said "by god!" "how awful!" and other stuff like that. the people who were now inhabiting the compartment in which i'd spent the night tore it apart looking for the items, but to no avail. everyone in the train car expressed their condolences to me. i waited for them to start a collection, but none ever materialized. a mongolian lady who was in the compartment with amanda and annette said she hoped this wouldn't reflect poorly on mongolian people, because she'd ridden the train a plethora of times and hadn't ever heard of any robberies before.

i went back to sleep, cutting my losses, knowing that i wouldn't get my stuff back, wondering if the compartment lady had stolen them, kicking myself for leaving them out on the table (although who woulda thunk?) and for not locking the door. i looked on the bright side:
*they hadn't taken my video camera, which has hours of footage from the trip so far
*in the video camera bag was my camera's memory card, filled with the trips first 300 photos...these are worth more than a camera any day, and i was fortunate to have changed memory cards only a few days prior
*they hadn't taken my wallet
*they hadn't taken my passport

it was the last one that was really fortunate: cameras and ipods and game boys can be easily replaced, credit cards can be cancelled, but a lost passport would have stranded me in russia and most likely necessitated a trip back to moscow or wherever the nearest US embassy was to clear up the situation. so i was bummed about the robbery, but relieved that it hadn't been worse. i fell back asleep and slumbered on until noon -- this time with the door locked.

Updated with picture-y goodness

I'm killing time during the aforementioned ten-hour train-wait-a-thon by blogging and posting and whatnot here in Irkutsk...many photos have been added...enjoy! ben

irkutsk, siberia, russia

to paraphrase neil diamond, "we're going to mongolia...today!"

finally. it's been an adventure ever since tomsk the other day. it looked like we'd have our trip from one end of russia to the other broken up by the little side trip to tomsk, with one ticket from moscow to novosibirisk and another from moscow to mongolia (the government subsidizes long-azz trips like that, so it's cheaper to buy them like that than for individual legs), but from tomsk, we couldn't get any trains headed to ulan bataar for like a week, so we had to take a long, leisurely trip to a town called taiga on a local train.

while amanda and annette dozed, i passed the time speaking english with a pair of guys in their early twenties and then with a very nice siberian blonde with sparkling eyes who ended up only being 18 years old. it was a nice way to pass four hours.

taiga's on the trans-siberian mainline, but once we got there, there were no trains to mongolia for many days, either, so we had to wait six hours and then take an overnight 14-hour trip to krasnoyarask. it turned out that something had gotten lost in translation along the way, however, and as the three of us sat near-slumbering in the early evening heat inside taiga station, the lady who had sold us the tickets came running up to us and blabbered a bunch of stuff in russian. the only part we could catch was "train! train" followed by "go! go!" and lots of arm movements. we deduced that we were about to miss our train and the three of us sprang to life and ran -- literally -- out onto the platform and towards coach number 8, which is where our tickets told us to go. unfortunately, the train we had run to -- and let me tell you, the people on the train must have gotten a kick out of watching me chug along in the humidity and mosquitos, in my sandals, lugging all my luggage, etc. -- was the wrong train. we waited for a long passenger train to saunter past us on the second track and then crossed over to the third track, the nice ticket lady helping us comprehend the differences between tracks one, two, and three all along. the passenger train rolled by and we found our train, idling, but still a good ten minutes from setting off. we thanked the lady, found our compartment, and sat down, exhausted.

it's about a million degrees inside the second-class compartments because the cars aren't air-conditioned. i was in a room with three russian guys; annette and amanda were in another compartment with two other russian guys. i had been assigned a top bunk, but owing to my knowledge of isaac newton's principal of gravity, i prepared to bribe my way into one of the bottom bunks, both of which were already being occupied by the people already in my compartment. my money was unnecessary, however, as one of the russian guys vaulted - really, gymnast-style - up onto the top bunk. we set out at about 11 p.m. as the sun set and rolled on until morning. with the windows down, our compartment cooled down to a quite comfortable degree, although i suspect the russian guys opened it more than anything just to let the clickity-clack of the rails drown out my snoring.

the carriage attendant woke me up at six to say, i'd imagine, that we'd be arriving in krasnoyarsk soon, but we didn't end up rolling into the town until nearly half past eight. in krasnoyarask, another depressing old russian industrial town, although one with an artsy side (there was a huge old tile mural of lenin leading the people forward on the side of a building adjacent to the train station), we found out there were no trains to mongolia until saturday. but the ticket lady indicated to us somehow that we should take ANOTHER overnight train, this one to irkutsk, and that then we'd be able to - after waiting again - catch a train to mongolia.

so we did that. we hung out from 8:30 a.m. until half past 4 in the krasnoyarask station yesterday. annette's having abdominal dissention, so it was real fun for her. we found some comfy couches in what was probably a VIP area (we always claim "foreigner immunity/ignorance/stupidity" when it comes to doing stuff like that) and were able to pass half the time in glorious cushioned comfort until we got kicked out. then it was back to the sweaty waiting lobby until it was time for the train, after annette made one final trip to the toilet.

amanda and annette napped the first few hours of the train trip and i sat in the dining car and finished reading The DaVinci Code, which i started when we were rolling out of moscow a few days ago. it was a real page-turner, but i thought the ending was kind of formulaic and sappy. sometimes i'd just stare out the window and watch siberia roll by. i can't believe how long we've been on the train and the scenery's looked basically the same: rolling hills, birch forests, small wooden villages, depressing industrial towns with communist smoke stacks belching out god knows what, etc...although i guess we're about ready to change into some mountainous area and then mongolia will have the great Gobi Desert for our viewing delight.

we arrived in irkutsk this morning at 10:30 and got our tickets for mongolia - finally! we'll roll out of here at about 9 p.m. and then (sometime during the 34-hour duration of this leg of the trip) be out of russia and onto the next stage of the adventure: mongolia.

see ya there!

Moscow to Tomsk

annette, amanda, and gleb (the guy annette had been drinking heavily with during the overnight trip from st. petersburg to moscow) were standing on the station platform, heads down, obviously all of them feeling the effects of the night before by the time i caught up to them after getting off the overnight train friday morning at moscow's yaraslovsky station. it had been a great eight-hour trip from st. petersburg to moscow, but now we had seven hours or so to kill before beginning our trans-mongolian trip eastward at half past one in the afternoon.

it was a long time to sit in a station, all of us on three hours' sleep apiece. i'd like to say it flew by, but that was not the case. time dragged. we went into an open bar in the station's grand, lavish lobby (complete with lenin statue -- as seen everywhere in russia) and found some chairs in which we could collapse for awhile. people were already drinking (as seen everywhere in russia)...we took turns walking around, one of us always remaining with our large collection of backpacks, rolling suitcases, etc...at nine-ish we went up to the station's internet cafe, where i typed the entry from the other day about the trip from st. petersburg to moscow. i should go back and see if i wrote anything libelous or scandalous, as i was in quite a haze while i was typing. we all remarked that we were in no condition to be blogging, lest the wrong things come out. i actually fell asleep at my computer a few times (annette nudged me before the snoring got too loud), just like back when i worked at the county!

we got going on the train at half past one, right on schedule, and we all feel asleep. we had a four-person room, with two bunks on each side. the bunks were actually long enough for me to stretch out and wide enough for me to not fall off of...annette slept across from me, amanda slept above me, and a russian girl who looked chinese, from the far-off outpost town of ulan-ude, russia, slept above annette. i apparently started snoring right away, since i am known to be able to fall asleep anywhere. annette told me that the ulan-ude girl was looking at me, wide-eyed, as the guttural sounds eminated from my throat or nose or mouth or wherever. my bad. later in the trip, i tried to apologize to her, but there's no entry in the phrasebook for "sorry my snoring kept you up/reminded you of a hibernating bear"...i ended up pantomiming my apology to her, much to ulan-ude girl's amusement.

woke up at sixish. the sun was up until almost eleven p.m. it was wicked hot and sticky inside the compartment. lots of people spent good parts of the trip leaning out the windows along the narrow hallway corridor on the left-hand side of each sleeper car. the hallway was very narrow so each time i'd go by on my way to wherever, people would sneak back into their sleeping compartment. they were very nice.

the next few days on the train were all the same, but were all great...spent time in the dining car reading, talking to people, staring out the window at the scenery going by: drab russian industrial towns, birch forests, pine forests that blew a nice scent through the open windows, little towns, old ancient graveyards, churches in the distance, rivers, lakes, long bridges...we just went on and and on, never stopping, heading eastward. in some places you could hear and feel the click-clack of the wheels on the old rails; in other parts they'd laid new track and the train rolled along smoothly and silently.

the three of us were very popular on the train. people would come by our compartment, stick their heads on, talk to us in russian, whatever...this adorable little blonde girl named leera from the compartment next door took a liking to me and spent the better part of the last two days in our compartment, playing patty-cake with annette and amanda, and a game with me where i'd lay my hand, palm-down, on her hand, palm-up, and try to take mine away before she could slap it...stupid slow reflexes! i'd often lose!

in these ways we passed the miles, or kilometers, as it were. it was great. we'd stop every few hours, sometimes for a minute or two, sometimes for twenty in a larger town. on those times, i'd get out and stretch my legs and see what people were selling (ice cream, entire nasty-looking cooked fish, cool fur hats) on the platform. i'd never stray too far from my car, though, as getting stranded as the train pulled away (with my passport in my luggage aboard the train and only the clothes on my back ot my name) would not be my cup of tea.

i tried to buy a fur hat when we stopped for half an hour in yekaterinburg, but they didn't have any that would fit my big-ass head. then, as if the hat selling lady wasn't aghast enough at me nearly ripping her ware while trying to get it on my noggin, i proceeded to drop said hat on the dirty train platform....she just shook her head and gave me a disapproving look. i hurried back to the train and hid, out of her sight, until we started our eastward journey again.

the bathrooms on the train were nothing that you'd find in home and gardens magazine...maybe they'd get consideration in "places where you might just want to hold it" magazine, but there was no other choice on the train for so long. the carriage attendants locked the bathrooms from five minutes before each station until five minutes after departure because the toilets -- while thankfully western style instead of the squat-style that is so painful to my knees -- open directly to the tracks below. this provides men, if they are standing while doing their business, a lovely view of a water show below as the drops splish and splash on the train track zipping rapidly by below. these bathrooms haven't seen a mopping in many a year, and they make airline bathrooms seem roomy by comparison, so i made it a goal to use them as infrequenlty as possible from thursday night, when our voyage started on the train in st. petersburg, to this morning, when we arrived in the town of tomsk, about halfway across russia. number one wasn't that big of a problem, although i found aiming to be quite a chore if the train was jostling back and forth a lot...number two was out of the question for the four days, so i started a crash diet right there and then in st. petersburg on thursday night, and i am happy to report that i made it all the way to our hotel this morning, even though i did a few stupid things along the way on the train. i tried to eat as little as possible to avoid, um, building up bulk, but the things i did eat, at some points, seemed to be the exact WRONG things: big container of fruit juice? don't mind if i do! chocolate bar? bring it on! delicious, juicy russian peach? i was most of the way through it before it dawned on me that it might not be helpful to my cause. but i made it, nonetheless, and without any real abdominal dissention to speak of.

It was a long, long train journey to get to novisibirisk, the city to which we'd bought our first trans-mangolian tickets, but we slowed down and started approaching the station at a bit after midnight last night. the schedule on board the train said we'd arrive at 9:15, but that's because for some reason they run ALL the trains, all the way across russia, on MOSCOW TIME...so it said 9:15 as we stepped off the train, on the platform clock, but then 12:15 a.m. once we got outside into the town center. silly communists!

the hotel right across from the station cost 100 bucks for a single and 120 for a double (three times the price listed in the lonely planet book), so we decided that -- since we weren't staying in novisibirisk anyways, we'd head out right away for tomsk. tomsk is an old wooden siberian town, 79 km north of the trans-siberian mainline and 270 km northeast of novisibirisk. instead of overpaying for a hotel for a few hours in novisibirisk, we opted for a cab ride here to tomsk...

the cab ride cost about $150 for the three of us, which wasn't that bad of a deal. it was 1:30 by the time we left, but the driver drove very fast (even through the fog and encroaching forests) so we got here at about 4 a.m...we didn't know where to go, so the driver's rolling down his window to ask other drivers, then asking hookers, and the hookers directed us to an hourly hotel right around the corner from where we were, but we didn't want to stay there, but the satisfactory hotel that the nice lady at the hourly hotel called for us said there wouldnt' be any rooms ready until noon...we had the driver drive us over to the (satisfactory hotel) hotel sputnik and they somehow found rooms for us, so we checked in at 5:30 a.m. and slept all day after showering for the first time since thursday morning (i was ripe, as was annette...amanda, well, not so much)...

i just haven't been able to get it going today. i wanted to walk around and see this town, but i slept until three and i've just been lollygagging it around since then (half past eight p.m. now)...at least we got to check in at 6 a.m. monday morning and stay until noon tuesday for one night's rate...

it was so beautiful and as we were driving in the cab, which had all four windows partially down -- either to keep the driver awake or (i suspect) to try to freeze out the stench. there was a huge full moon hanging over the horizon in one direction and then the sun started coming up at about half past three on the other side of the horizon...neither amanda, annette, nor i slept a wink on the taxi ride...it was crazy "peter and the wolf" country out there...i could imagine the wolves and bears and siberian tigers lurching just out of sight...even though we were all tired (after four days on the train), i half-hoped for a flat tire out there in the siberian forest just so i could hear wolves howling -- provided i could hear that from the safety of the cab...

we'll be here in tomsk for another day tomorrow, and then back on the trans-siberian tuesday night for another few days and then we'll be in mongolia for about ten days...