Great Mongolian Romance 2007

On our way home from our afternoon horseback ride, our guides wanted to stop off at the base of turtle rock and play some pool. There are a few pool tables set up and it is apparently their only form of entertainment. So we stopped and I met a Mongolian cowboy named Suuk Bot. He spoke no English but we had a lovely little chat, aided by Burma, who also served as our translator. We went back to our Ger and hung out at the billiards table in our little Ger town and a little later Suuk Bot showed up and wanted to hang out. It was a very funny conversation that we had through Burma, our translator. He asked me how old I was and not long after that he suggested that we get married. I thought maybe that was a little fast for me to jump into an engagement so I decided to point out some potential difficulties we might have as a couple, he gave some rather compelling arguments. I asked him how we were supposed to communicate if we couldn’t speak the same language. He told me that he would teach me Mongolian and that we really wouldn’t need to talk much. I can vouch for the fact that he really was a man of very few words, unfortunately I am most definitely NOT a woman of few words. I asked if he had ever been to the US or would want to live there he said we could go on our honeymoon there but then we would live in Mongolia. He told me he was the best looking Mongolian around and he was very rich and would be a very good husband. He invited my friends and I to his ger (which he shares with his parents) for breakfast the next morning. He said he would come over to our Ger on his horse to take us back. The next morning he knocked on our ger door and then led us over to his Ger past his herd of horses. His mother made us fried empanadas for breakfast and we hung out in their Ger. Suuk bot showed me all of their baby cows and after breakfast this dad took us to show us where they get their drinking water. They attach a plastic bottle to a tap in a tree and take the water from the tree. We had it for breakfast. It was cool and really good. Suuk Bot invited me to stay there at his Ger with him while the rest of my friends headed back to reality. I considered my options carefully, and while I do want to learn new languages and live abroad for the rest of my life, and as cool as it would sound to say I lived in a Ger with my Mongolian cowboy and drank water from a tree…I hate the cold, and Mongolia gets cold. So I said farewell to my Mongolian boyfriend and I am very happy that we ended things amicably.



We went back to Ulaanbaatar and went to a real Mongolian dance club. The live band was from the Philippines and all of their songs were in English. We had a great time dancing and then went home and crashed. The next day we bought some souvenirs and visited the square. Odd, fun fact: Most large cities in the world have a main square and it is typically my favorite place to visit. Then we got on the train to head back. The ride was much less crowded and therefore, much more pleasant…at first. I tried to sleep but the windows are not sealed very well so half of the Gobi desert flew into the train car and I inhaled it. My face and mouth were coated in a layer of dust and I couldn’t breathe so I sat up with my covered by my shirt all night.

We found a dirty little minivan with only one backseat to take us across the border. Unfortunately the border was closed so we ended up waiting for 8 hours for it to open. There were two alleged causes for the closure. One, we were told that the border couldn’t find the stamps for the passports and the second report said there was no electricity. We finally got through, and got on our bus back to Beijing. We slept on the bus and arrived in Beijing at 5 am. I went home, showered and then headed up to church. It was a fabulous trip. I got everything out of it that I wanted and would do it again all the same in a heartbeat.

Ah the Mongolian Country Life

We were greeted in Ulaanbaatar by our three friends; Eric, Devon and Mike and Burma, a girl from Mongolia who served her mission with Eric in Oklahoma. We went back to the hotel, took a much needed shower, went to the store to buy snacks and a much needed pair of sunglasses to shield my eyes from the intense desert sun and the crazy sand wind. There was not much of selection so I ended up getting some hideous things with an atrocious gold design on the side. and then jumped in cars that Burma had arranged for us and headed about forty minutes outside of the city to a place called turtle rock to experience the TRUE Mongolian lifestyle.

On the way to our campsite we saw a couple of Mongolian men with a HUGE eagle stopped the side of the road. We stopped to look at the eagle and he let us pet it and let whoever wanted to hold it, put on this big glove and hold him. The eagles feathers were so thick and hard that it almost felt like a reptile. A little further along the road we saw aOn the way to our campsite we saw a couple of Mongolian men with a HUGE eagle stopped on man with camels. We stopped and he let us ride them for 1,000 tigirig (about a dollar) a piece. It is a fairly bumpy ride but it was fun.















At turtle rock there were lots of camps full of Gers. A ger is the Mongolian version of a tee pee. It is wider and shorter and made of lambskins and everyone in Mongolia used to live in them and LOTS of people still do. Right in the middle of the city there are a bunch of little neighborhoods that are divided up by fences just like a normal neighborhood but instead of a little house in the middle of each, there is a ger. Inside the Ger there is a stove that is right in the middle with a pipe through the middle of the roof. The beds are placed along the outside walls. The front door is really short and it is pretty warm inside. Especially when someone keeps the stove going all night. We had stew for dinner and then went wandering around in the hills.




You will notice huge fake dinosaurs in front of these Gers. Come to find out, Mongolia is somewhat of a dinosaur graveyard. They dig up all sorts of bones in the deserts.


We woke up the next day and had arranged for a lamb to be slaughtered. We watched and I was expecting to be horrified but it was so quick and clean. Nothing like what I expected. The Mongolian guides made a small incision in the lamb’s chest and then he stuck his arm in all the way and snapped the lamb’s spinal chord. The lamb didn’t even move. There was no blood during the whole slaughter because they kept all the organs in the lambs natural membrane. They put the pieces of meat into a large milk can with rocks that had been heating up in the fire and then put the can on the stove in the middle of their ger.













We left on a horseback ride with our two Mongolian guides. Mongolian horses are much smaller than what you are used to in America but ther are really strong and strong willed I might add. Mine had a real attitude problem so I cussed at it in Mongolian and hit it with the reins…she didn’t care.









We visited a Buddhist temple that was up on a hill and then went riding around all over the place before coming back to a delicious Lamb lunch in our ger.














Many of you unadventurous travelers have said my vacation didn’t sound all that great. It was in fact AMAZING!! How many of you have pet an eagle, ridden a camel, eaten fresh lamb or learned how to curse at a horse in Mongolian?

Stay tuned for part three, entitled, my Great Mongolian Romance 2007....

Great Mongolian Adventure 2007 Part 1

On Sunday after church I rushed home and threw a few items of warm clothing in a backpack and headed to a bus station about 15 minutes from my apartment to start my Great Mongolian Adventure 2007. To commemorate the one-week May holiday 4 friends and I decided to brave the deserts of Outer Mongolia. I met up with my friend Faye and we climbed onto a tall red bus. Inside there were three rows of bunk beds that stretched from the front of the bus to the end. The bus started heading north out of Beijing at 5 pm and we rode, talked and slept in our bunk beds until 5 am when we reached the border town between Inner Mongolia (part of China) and Outer Mongolia (not part of China). We took our time getting off the bus (it was 5 am and cold) so by the time we got out we were the only bus passengers who hadn’t been swooped away by the over eager cab drivers. The 20 cab drivers who were left without passengers attacked and were trying to physically drag us into their cars using rather unconvincing coaxing in a mixture of Chinese, Mongolian and English. According to Faye one guy even grabbed her bum! Since when will that convince a girl to get in your car? There was one HUGE Mongolian man with long dirty hair and wild eyes. He looked to me like what I imagine Ghenghis Khan looked like. We decided that the Genghis look alike was a good omen for our trek into Mongolia so we jumped in his car and he took us to a little hotel where we could nap until the border opened at 9. We slept and then after haggling for a price for the ride that would take us through the border we got in a dirty old van and the driver drove us around town for three hours looking for more passengers.
We left China and got Mongolian stamps in our passports and were dropped off at the train station in Outer Mongolia. On the wall at the entrance someone had spray painted in English “Death is comino” we assumed they meant Death is coming but were undeterred. We got to the train station at 1 pm only to find that all the train tickets had been sold out for the day. Our friends were waiting for us in UlaanBataar and that 17-hour train ride was the only way to get there. We tried everything to get on that train. Even all the scalper’s tickets were sold out. We had asked and begged everyone but were finding no solutions.
This is the lovely border town that we almost got stuck in.

Then Baikel found us (she is the one in gray). She spoke some English and is the kindest warmest person I think I have ever met. She made us her project for the day and dragged us around town trying to use every connection she could find to get us on that train. Finally she hooked us up with a train smuggler who spoke no English, we paid the woman 20,000 Togrot (about 20 dollars). At 4:30 as all the ticketed passengers were charging the guards at the doors to the train cars our smuggler took me and yelled at the guards to lay off as she pushed me on board. Baikel yelled, “you will have to find Faye in one of the other cars when the train starts moving!” Once on board I was alone in a crowded sweaty train car with lots of boxes and tons of people who spoke no English and looked at me as though I were definitely lost. I sat down near a family and prayed that Faye had made it on board, I had no way of knowing since our phones didn’t work and I couldn’t go looking for her until the train started moving…when it would be to late to do anything about it if she hadn’t.

The train started moving and after about twenty minutes I started to walk through the crowded cars looking for Faye. I found her 6 cars up sitting in a sweaty heap with a large group of Mongolians.
This begins the portion of the trip that we loving call Tangled and Sweaty Mongolian Adventure 2007. We were so excited that we both made it. I joined the sweaty heap and we made a bunch of friends although nobody spoke any English. Fortunately, through my experience living alone in a country where I can’t communicate and teaching children who don’t understand me, I have become quite proficient at communicating without words and well, Faye is a phenomenal artist. Her drawing of a toilet wowed them all. Mongolian culture is unlike any other I have seen. Everything is communal and everyone is family right from the start. There are no formalities, (well other than if you step on someone’s foot you have to shake their hand). I figure this culture must come from the fact that Mongolians are traditionally people who live a very hard nomadic desert life in tents. They MUST help each other to survive so their charity is not so much a gift like it is with Latin Americans as much as it is a way of life. It seemed to me that the way they look at life is, if you are in their presence you are family. No questions asked, you are treated like family and they expect to be treated like your family. They get close very fast and they don’t expect gratitude for the kind things they do for you, they do them because that is who they are, not because they are looking for a reaction from you. We hung out all night until our smuggler, who found us later and brought us back to her car, and her people got off. Then we slept until about 9:30 am when we pulled into Ulaanbaatar after a 17 hour train ride across the Gobi Desert.

Here is a picture of a traditionally dressed Mongolian man who cuddled with our sweaty heap for a few hours.

My wordiness should come as no surprise to anyone reading this, but if you would like the condensed version for the next few days of the trek, let me know.