I've Landed on Mars

Yesterday morning started with a 4:45 am wake up, street dumplings (hurray! my intestines are fine!) and a long ride to the airport. I started smiling to myself a little bit when I walked up to the counter labeled Ulaan Baator. Holy crap!

I made a great decision about the flight. Airplane food is crap, right? Well, if you get the special "low-fat" meal it's a little less crappy. Instead of spam, I was given turkey. As it turns out, Mongolians seem pretty big on canned meats.

I've titled this post "I've Landed on Mars" because the plane landing gave me a view that you can only get coming into Mongolia or if you've taken a ride on a Mars rover. A huge portion of the flight was over the Gobi and it got clearer as we landed. The vast, never ending dunes with white spots (yurts) and the pale grassy fields are astounding.

Unfortunately, my cab driver form the airport ripped me off and dropped me off at the wrong location. Some things are universal.

I finally got to Zaya Hostel, which is much more like a nice hotel and immediately met some Australians. They are here observing health development work which is fascinating. I ended up hanging out with one of them, Grace, all night. More on that in a sec.

I started walking around the area a little bit, exchanged some money and checked in with gertoger, my tour organizer. As it turns out, I'll be doing BOTH trips completely alone. It's going to be intense. Getting a feel for the area was hard because this city is so weird. It's dusty but not polluted with bright blue skies and amazing weather. The buildings are all Soviet style concrete boxes, including the biggest mall, "The State Department." Mongolian people look so different than other Asians- they are tall and not as thin- which one told me was from all of the meat. I buy it.

I got a late lunch at Cafe Amsterdam and chatted for a while with some guys from Holland who were excited for the soccer match. They are just renting a driver and going across the country. I wish I could go with them but I have my own adventures.

After lunch I took a walk through a local grocery store. I tried to use my pocket phrasebook to figure out if something was salty or sweet but the guy had no clue what I was trying to tell him so I splurged on it (less than a dollar for 2 pounds of biscuits) and ate a terrible version of a Russian tea cake with my Coca-cola Light.

I met up with Grace and we went to a cultural show designed for tourists at which I saw and heard the craziest things I've ever seen or heard in my whole life. It started with cultural dancing which was amazing. It's like Russia meets India meets China and yet distinctly Mongolian. For example, in one dance they danced with a stack of tea cups of their heads (Chinese style Russian bottle dancing?) with Russian style footwork with Indian style bells on their hands. In the end they showed there was tea in the cups by pouring the liquid from one cup to another- and it's a Mongolian white dairy drink. I loved it. But the craziest thing I saw was a contortionist. Whoa. She did the impossible and I don't think I can explain it. Just imagine a person doing something with their body that you think is completely impossible. The craziest thing I've ever heard now is Mongolian throat singing. They do something to produce two notes which sometimes sounds like a whistle over a didjeridoo (sp?) and at other times just sounds like a regular duet. I highly recommend checking it out.

After the show, Grace took me to a bar that has live music. There was no where to sit so the waitress set us up with some Mongolian girls who had reserved a large table. They were amazingly friendly! One was an endocrinologist who had fascinating things to say about Mongolian hospitals (if anything happens to me, get me the hell out of here!) and health policy. Another one was exactly my age and studying English. She offered to drive me around the city so I'm going to give her a call today. It's so rare to meet women like that in other countries. Normally, you have to fight off creepy men so this was special. Mongolians are super friendly and love talking crap about China and Chinese people. And some things are universal, so naturally we talked a lot about boyfriends and husbands. They were there to see what they called their favorite "boy band." We thought they weren't translating that correctly but no, they were. We saw a good chunk of a Mongolian boy band concert but had to leave before our ears started to bleed.

On our walk back we stopped in front of the State Department to get the feel for local culture as a huge crowd sat and watched the Holland-Brazil game on a big screen. I think the whole city was out!

So, wow, that was my first day in Mongolia. In fact, just half a day.