Huế

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There And Back Again

America is doing just ok. I caught up with some professors in Boston, had crepes at the place in South Campus and blueberry muffins at Dunkin Donuts, and am now back home in Indiana and settling in a bit before launching the Great Job Search.

I guess it's a little after the fact now, but I'm beginning to upload pictures from my trip — a slow process since 1) there are over 580 of them to sort through; and 2) we still just have dial-up in the house. So catching up on the news and blogs will also take a while. But you can see the first installment of pictures, from my three days in Beijing, now.

Under African Skies

... but not for much longer. I'm back in Lusaka now, after hitching down for three sun-and-wind-beaten hours in a battered old Japanese pick-up with wooden floorboards and the little voice chirping a warning announcement whenever the truck turns left. Hitching is definitely the way to go in Zambia, although all successes in that department are owed to Laura's skills. Since leaving Livingstone (we took a river cruise on the "African Princess", which was ok, but didn't get us nearly as close to the wildlife as the safari boat we were supposed to have taken -- the bus brought us there late so we took the free drinks as consolation prize), I've been spending the past several days out in the village in Zambia's Mkushi district, Central Province, where I spent a relaxing time laying about, straining to keep up with Laura on the dirt biking trails, tagging along for fish pond inspections, and playing with her dog, Winston. Life as a Peace Corps volunteer out in the bush is a much more challenging one than that of a JET teacher in Japan, but Laura has made a pretty nice home there, and it was good to be able to visit. (Oh, and I did get my bag back.)

Now I'm off to London, for a five-hour layover, and then Boston, where I hope to run into a few former professors at BU and enjoy some New England fall weather. I may or may not make a detour down the coast to New York City on the Chinatown bus, not sure at this point, but I am about out of money by now so I don't think I will be delaying the return home to Indiana for too much longer.

I hope everybody's been taking good care of America in my absence.

Dr. Livingstone, I presume

I have made it to Zambia, alive and intact. The trip from Bangkok was, to put it mildly, a hellish nightmare of epic proportions. The minibus from my Bangkok guesthouse to the airport got stuck in traffic, of course, but I made it there with over two hours to spare, so I had a leisurely check-in and even had time to buy a barbecue chicken nikuman from the Family Mart (!) there in the departure terminal. My bag, I was told, was going to be checked straight on to Lusaka, so I said goodbye to it, and then went through security. I used some of my last Thai baht on a scoop of gelato and some Thai cooking spices for Laura (my friend here in Zambia). Then I sat around at the departure gate with a huge hoard of Thai university students on a tour and a bunch of Brits for a bit before getting on around 9:30 in the evening.

Etihad Airways, the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates, is pretty fancy flying, with soothing sand-colored carpeting and something like 500 channels of movies and tv programs and video games in the seatbacks. The flight was fairly full but I ended up with a row to myself, although two people later moved to join me when their handsets weren't working. I didn't sleep, but ended up watching the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie (all three were on offer, but I'd only seen the second one once before, and felt I needed a refresher; it made more sense the second time around) and an incredibly strange German movie, "Deepfrozen", which started out as what could've been a quirky romantic comedy about a very socially awkward man living in a nowhere village delivering frozen pizzas, who falls for an exotic young girl who's a rock groupie whose van breaks down outside of town ... but then people start dying, and maybe she killed them, but in the end maybe he did it, except he probably couldn't have? And she rides off in a limo with James Brown. Very bizarre, and not quite what I was expecting going into it. Anyhow, I didn't sleep, so when we touched down in Abu Dhabi it was around 3:00 AM Bangkok time -- I had been up for about 20 hours at this point. I staggered into the waiting lounge, where I bought a cherry danish that tasted exactly like America, and also some water. I sat around for about an hour and a half waiting to board the plane, which I eventually did; it was 2:00 in the morning local time and my flight was scheduled to be leaving at 2:30.

At this point I did get a chance to stretch out on two seats against the side and fall asleep -- I think it was at least a half hour, but couldn't have been more than an hour, because at around 3:00 (six AM in Bangkok, or almost 24 hours since I had woken up there the previous morning) I was awakened by the captain announcing that there was mechanical trouble with one of the engines, and they were de-boarding the plane on account of repairs that would take at least four hours. So me and the other passengers dragged ourselves off and back into the terminal, where four beleaguered Etihad employees were rebooking the entire flight. The lucky ones heading to Johannesburg, they put up in a hotel there in Abu Dhabi and onto a flight the next morning; but since South Africa wasn't my final destination, and since that delay would mean missing my morning flight to Lusaka, they told me they were going to put me a taxi for Dubai, have me take an Emirates Air flight to Johannesburg at 10:00 AM, and then have South African Airways put me on an evening flight for Lusaka that should have gotten me in around 8:00 PM on the evening of the 14th. Ok. They gave me a voucher for the taxi and a white sheet of paper with my FIM ("Flight Interrupt Manifest") details on it that would get me on the necessary flights, and sent me on my way. So I passed through United Arab Emirates customs at 4:00 in the morning and stepped into the cab that arrived shortly after for the drive to Dubai.

The taxi wasn't actually marked as such, and the car was quite nice; a luxury model of some sort, with video headrests a dashboard covered in displays. The effect was marred by the seatbelts, though; as I fastened in, it felt like they had cut roughly through the seat fabric to put in the buckle. We pulled out onto four lanes of smooth, perfectly unblemished, perfectly empty tarmac laid down by legions of sweating South Asian migrant workers, the driver gradually bringing up the speed as we cut through the desert on an orange-lit ribbon of highway. Wide awake from the frigid air conditioning and my brain having reached the point where dead tiredness turns over into vivid wakefulness, we passed palm trees lining the highway, unseen lights out in the desert, two large mosques lit with neon green, and a Dunkin Donuts. The rear window had some sort of glaze on the glass that caused the sodium-burning h ighway floodlights to twist into writhing tendrils as we passed beneath, the car beeping politely as we cross the 120 kilometer speed limit threshold. After a hundred kilometers or more, we entered the shelter of the high glass skyscraper towers of Dubai, many under construction and topped with cranes perched like birds greeting the dawn.

Just before six in the morning we pulled into the loading zone at the airport, where I attempted to explain my situation at the Emirates counter. They were confused, of course, as was I, but the guy took my piece of paper and told me to wait there until nine, when he'd let me know if there was room on the standby waiting list for me to get on this flight to Johannesburg. I didn't dare lie down on the couches, for fear I wouldn't wake up -- so I sat there, freezing in the air conditioning as my body functions started shutting down. After an interminable wait, I went back to get a ticket and my magic piece of paper again and sprinted my way to the flight, where I boarded with a legion of South Africans returning from holidays in the UK. By this point, my brief hour of rest aside, I had been awake for close to 30 hours, and in transit for about 16.

But -- I got stuck in a center seat next to a large woman and a German backpacker and didn't sleep any on the eight hours down to Johannesburg. I watched movies, I played video games, I ate snacks, I listened to the Swiss flight attendant flirting with the South African girl in the seat in front of me, I tried to sleep as hard as I could, but when we touched down in South Africa I was still awake. Unbelievable.

Now, when I got my ticket from the Emirates guy, he gave me back my special piece of white paper from the Etihad people and said, "They're going to try and take this from you at the gate, but don't give it to them, you need it in Johannesburg". He was right -- the people at the gate in Dubai insisted, and even though I was skeptical when they said that Etihad should've put me in the system and I shouldn't need it in Joburg and that they needed to keep this copy, I was exhausted and just wanted to get on the plane, so I wrote down my FIM number and gave up the sheet. This was of course a mistake, since when I got to the international transfer desk in Joburg the rather unfriendly South African Airways people -- who were supposed to be putting me on an evening flight to Lusaka at Etihad's expense, since I had missed the one I was scheduled for that morning -- said that I wasn't in the system and without the paper they couldn't do anything, and that Etihad should've given me two FIM papers for the two flights. Oh, and the Etihad people there had already left for the day, so I needed to come back at 7:00 in the morning. Exhausted, defeated, and at this point about ready to just go to sleep there in the queue, I gave up and checked myself into a very posh airport hotel at $185 a night and crawled into the softest bed ever. It was seven thirty in South Africa, past midnight in Bangkok, and I had been in transit for 26 hours and awake for the better part of 40 -- a new personal record, as my previous best was only 27.

I still woke up at the crack of dawn though -- I'm more jetlagged in Africa than I've been on the rest of the trip, since it's actually seven hours time difference from Japan. I went back to the airport and found the Etihad offices and talked to the guy there, who was pretty helpful, and who got me on the morning flight to Lusaka. I'm still confused as to who exactly I should be blaming for all this -- Etihad for not giving me enough FIMs, Emirates for taking the one I had, South African for being no help at all? -- but whatever, I made it on the flight and to meet Laura, albeit a full 24 hours later than I should've. And I got a UAE and South Africa stamp in the passport out of it too. My bag, of course, did not make it -- I have no clear idea where it is at the moment; either somewhere in Abu Dhabi floating in the aether, or otherwise in Johannesburg with the pallet of other peoples' luggage from my flight who also were missing bags when we disembarked. So right now I've got one pair of clothes, my camera, and my iPod to my name; but I imagine the bag will show up eventually. I gave them Laura's cell phone number here and with luck it will turn up, but Lusaka is not an especially happening town so we decided not to sit around and wait for it after the first day; yesterday we hitchhiked 472 kilometers south to the town of Livingstone on the border with Zimbabwe, home of Victoria Falls and a museum dedicated to the famous explorer.

Zambia is more expensive to travel in than Southeast Asia, because most travellers here are rich Anglos on safari, but this morning I went to the falls and had breakfast on an island looking over the plunge, which was quite cool; this evening we're taking a riverboat and going looking for big game. We've actually already seen zebras and giraffes, wandering through the grounds of the hotel that hosted the breakfast (which is actually within a national park, and which was full of rich old tourists). After two more days of activities here -- horseback riding, bungee jumping, and canoeing are all possibilities I think, although I'm not sure what we'll end up doing -- we're going to hitch back north to Laura's village, where things will be considerably more sedate; there's an agro-forestry workshop and some fish farming she's doing, and otherwise we will probably be taking it easy for the week there.

It was immensely stressful getting here but I am here now and, missing bag aside, things are going well. Africa!

Out of Asia

Angkor: wow.

Also, bicycling around Angkor: wow. I went through four and a half liters of water and I'm pretty sure I sweated it all out again.

The road from Siem Reap to Bangkok did not take 14 hours as I had feared, but the six it took to get to the Thai border were some of the worst roads I've crossed over; possibly even worse than Mongolia, since you can't just drive off onto the side on account of the fact that it's all surrounded by rice fields. Still, I made it here to Bangkok in about 10 hours, and this evening head to airport for to begin what will probably be about 24 hours of flights. The only good thing to say about this route is it will give me what will probably be my life's only stopover in Abu Dhabi, for about two hours anyhow.

On to Africa!

Cambodian Crossing

Well, the suit turned out pretty good.

From Hoi An I took a trip down to see the memorial at My Lai, which was as you might expect something of an emotionally draining visit. I was the only visitor so I got a personal guided tour from an earnest young woman who took me around the reconstructed house foundations where the hamlet once stood, and I stood by the ditch where Lieutenant Calley's soldiers cut down 107 civilians. (Its banks have been reinforced with some molded concrete now, which I think maybe detracts -- slightly -- from the impact... but, still.) Probably the most emotional part was watching a short documentary they showed which featured the helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, who stopped to rescue 10 civilians and who returned 30 years later to meet two of the survivors. On an otherwise very dark day, his courage and humanity were inspiring, and it was very moving watching these (now quite old) women thank him for an act that was at once amazingly brave and also very simply the right thing to do. I can only hope the United States continues to be able to produce men (and women) of his heroism.

I came back to Hoi An to catch a bus south to the small beachside port of Quy Nhon, once home to a large US and South Vietnamese military base, where my father was stationed. Today the city is one of Vietnam's quieter beachfronts, with few foreign tourists (who mostly go further south, to Nha Trang) and many fishing boats plying the bay. It appears there's nothing left of the old base -- not only have things been stripped away and recycled, but the area where it once stood has actually undergone some major redevelopment, with hotels and a supermarket / shopping mall and a wide flat boulevard lined with trees where the airstrip once ran. After an evening shower, I took another walk along the beach in search of a seafood restaurant this evening and passed a large segment of Quy Nhon's young male population out playing soccer or volleyball in the sand; many young kids were out with there parents as well and I was fairly bombarded with "hello!"s until it got too dark for them to notice I was a foreigner.

It's been planes, cars, boats, motorcycles, and many, many buses thus far this trip so for a change of pace I took the train from Quy Nhon to Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City -- which made for a very slow pace, as it turns out. I was in a narrow berth with six bunks with about an inch slab of padding on each; I was on the top bunk which meant I had about two feet of head clearance, so I spent most of the trip lying around, dozing, reading, listening to the iPod, and eating Oreos. We arrived in at around 9:00 in the evening and I took a taxi to a place that actually ended up being the most expensive place I've stayed at in Vietnam, $17 for a double. It wasn't as nice as the place I stayed at in Quy Nhon, either, which was a nice beachside backpacker place run by a friendly Kiwi expat; but still, I can't complain all that much.

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Although I'm sure Saigon has some hidden charms, I got the hell out of dodge the next day, with yet another bus ride, this time over the border into Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh. My first evening I took a short walk and had a dinner of delicious hot and sour soup before returning to my (very budget) guesthouse by the lakeside. Then the next morning I took a motorcycle out to the Killing Fields, which are maybe 15 minutes ride outside of Phnom Penh.

As we pulled down a dusty dirt road that led to the grounds, I heard the loud echoing of monks chanting broadcast over a PA system, mingled with jangly Cambodian music ... perhaps coming from a restaurant nearby, I'm not sure where exactly, but it made for a strangely appropriate soundtrack to wander around the place. The "fields" are actually dotted with copses of trees, and paths leading under them pass by many sunken depressions, their bottoms filled with small pools from the high water table (the land here is flat and low, formed from alluvial silt from the mighty Mekong River, whose bay once split Vietnam and Thailand into two separate peninsulas before filling in to form Cambodia) -- these were the mass graves, some of which have since been excavated. Along the paths there were still tattered scraps of clothing fallen from the many victims. A tall monument, maybe 30 feet in height, stands a short walk from the entrance gates, with arching spires and intricate carvings in the Cambodian temple style; the glass walls inside house a column of human skulls, victims who were brought here after being imprisoned in S-21 prison, interrogated, tortured, and finally disposed of.

The prison, which I visited that afternoon, was once a high school, with yellow paint still on the pitted concrete walls and rusting bars covering the windows. The rooms where they kept prisoners were mostly bare, with the occasional metal bedframe on which the interrogators worked. A torrential afternoon monsoon rain came down as I was passing between buildings and so I spent some time looking at pictures of the many men, women, and not a few children who passed through this place. I bought a book about the Khmer Rouge regime, and how Pol Pot's group effectively kidnapped and decimated Cambodian society after their overthrow of Gen. Lon Nol, which I'm reading now. I studied Cambodia a bit back in college but feel I need to refresh myself on the history some more. "Madness" is too simple of an explanation for what brought these things about but it's hard to think otherwise.

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Now I'm in Siem Reap, home of the mighty temples of Angkor Wat, for what will hopefully be a big change of tone. After yet another very long bus ride from Phnom Penh this morning, I arrived around three o'clock and was immediately set upon by the most voracious crowd of tuk-tuk drivers I've had the misfortunte to encounter yet. I was the only single foreigner on the bus (there was one Brit couple who had thought to book a ride to their guesthouse ahead of time; the rest were all locals) and so I ended up literally pinned and surrounded by about twenty guys waving signs as soon as I got off the bus. I finally broke off with one of them, whose "free" ride to my choice of guesthouse turned into $1.25 when I passed on his offer to drive me around the temples tomorrow. Instead I'm going to rent a bike from the place where I'm staying and head out at the crack of dawn tomorrow to try and fit in as much as I can... I have to book it to Bangkok by the 13th for a flight out of Asia so unfortunately I don't have enough time to take a more leisurely survey of the area.

And here comes the monsoon rains again.

Hello from Hoi An

The van that came and picked me up for the tour of Halong Bay stopped at several, increasingly tonier-looking, hotels on the way out of town, with the last stop being for an Australian woman who was at the Hanoi Hilton (not the one John McCain stayed in). With the exception of me, three Australians, and one South African, our group of a dozen was entirely Asian; several were actually Vietnamese, one Korean couple, and one older Japanese couple. I appeared to be the only obvious backpacker amongst the group; most of the rest looked to be in their 30s at least. Our tour guide was a young Vietnamese lady named Han, which like the Han in Hanoi means River. We drove out of town, threading our way through the scooter-filled streets and coming out into the countryside. We passed through ricefields dotted with ancestral shrines and small villages with concrete walls moldering in the tropical climes and narrow colonial-style houses. Water buffalos crossed the road at a few points. After an hour or so we made a rest stop at a tourist trap / market -- gotta pay the gas bills, I guess. After about twenty minutes we got back on the bus and continued uninterrupted out to Halong Bay, which was another three hours or so drive.

All manner of tour boats crowd around the docks at the entrance Halong Bay and after our guide bought us tickets we boarded one, a spacious double-decked craft titled the Haiphong 2, and broke our way out of the clot of ships to head out into the bay. We had a lunch of spicy tofu, cucumber slices, tasty prawns, and ginger chicken with rice as the boat cruised through open water. Chatting with the other English-speakers about my travels in Southeast Asia, the Australian lady mentioned that she was "dying to see the Killing Fields", which I thought was a pretty strange choice of expressions, given the circumstances. Midway through lunch we were amongst the islands, which are large limestone protrusions rising out of the water. The name in Vietnamese means "dragon descending", which according to legend is what thrust the rocks upwards like they are today. We cruised amongst the islands at a leisurely chug, and around 3:00 came to a large one, where we disembarked and entered a fairly sizeable above-water limestone cave. It was cooler inside, but even then you couldn't escape the humidity; I was soaked by the time I made it back to where the boat had docked. After that we crossed over to where several floating platforms had been lashed together to construct farm cages for fish, prawns, and mussels; it was here that we got our chance to kayak. I ended up paired with one of the older Australian guys, and we paddled around a few of the nearby islands for about 40 minutes before coming back to the boat. We finished with a leisurely boat ride back to the dock and then three hours in the bus back to Hanoi, where I got in at 9:00 and had a dinner of pho noodles while watching a pair of Vietnamese brothers whack each other which chopsticks. A nice tour, though I personally would've taken more time in the kayaks and less on the boat.

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Sunday morning I woke up early and spent a few hours on the hostel's computer attempting to figure out how to sign up for Skype service so that I can attempt to call come for cheap; it's pretty popular with the backpacker crowd here, and I've almost figured it out I think. My taxi out to the airport got me there with time to spare, as my flight on to Hue was actually delayed for an hour and a half -- though that did give me time to charge my iPod in the departure lounge and eat a lunch they provided for us (still just an inflight meal, though). I spent the flight reading the English language weekly paper, the main piece being an article on a woman who at the age of 15 had worked running supplies along the trail to Vietnamese fighters in the south. Most of it was devoted to her rapturous rememberances of the time she got to meet Ho Chi Minh. The flight was only about an hour and when we arrived at the small Hue airstrip and walked off the plane, a bus carried us fifty meters over to the terminal where we picked up our luggage. I took a taxi to the hotel I was planning on staying at, which worked out fine this time -- think that scam is mostly a big city thing, as this one was a fair metered ride.

I checked in and then took a walk across the river to see the old imperial citadel of Hue, which had crowds of Vietnamese families out and about, since I think they waived the admission fee in honor of Vietnam's Independence Day, which was Sunday -- Hanoi was festooned with flags all over during the few days I was there, but I didn't see any big celebrations. The citadel is crumbling and ruined thanks to fierce fighting between Vietnamese and US forces back in the 1960s, making it look much older than its 200-some years; large portions are open grassy fields, broken in place to place by old flagstones. Reconstruction is underway in some places, but I liked the ruined feel -- my timing was just right at the golden hour of sunset, and I got some good pictures that I'll be uploading when I get back.

I had dinner in a Hue restaurant, the Tropical Garden; wicker lampshades and candle light illuminated the open-air dining area, with a thatched roof and wooden lattice walls surrounded by plants and greenery. Waitresses in imperial purple ao dais brought me a succession of six courses, starting off with a souple of beef and noodles with a slight lemony tang, and finishing with some sort of fish pate wrapped in banana leaves (which you're not actually supposed to try and eat, I learned) and a plate of pineapple, watermelon, and dragonfruit. A quintet of traditional Vietnamese musicians played short pieces while I ate. It's the fanciest meal I've had in a while and the whole thing set me back maybe $15.

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As nice as Hue was, I decided to carry on, so yesterday I woke up at 7:00 and caught a bus to Hoi An, which is about three hours drive south. We passed several muddy brown rivers with sampan boats anchored to the banks, and large nets strung out over the water to be lowered down for fishing when the tide rises. Arriving in Hoi An, we got the hotel hard sell, stopping at several places for commissions before I finally got a chance to break out on my own. The place I found is one of the best I've stayed in yet, with a nice little double room, with big ceiling fan and hot water, all to myself for only seven bucks.

I had a lunch of sweet and sour pork and mixed fruit smoothie and then walked around the historic Old Town, which is closed to car traffic and full of old sulfurous yellow buildings and preserved architecture that blends Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese styles. Formerly an important trading stopover for merchants from Hainan island and Japan, there are several clan assembly halls and old merchant houses open to the public for a small fee. The nicest home I visited was still being lived in after seven generations, despite regular river floods which, as you could see marked on the walls, had once come as high as the ceilings of the first floor -- must've been at least eight to ten feet. It was full of old furniture, including some wooden plaques with mother-of-pearl-inlaid Chinese characters, each "brushstroke" formed in the shape of a bird in flight.

For dinner I went to the Ba Le Well restaurant just as it was getting dark, setting myself down at a low red plastic table in an open white room as several other Vietnamese families dined around me. In the back room, past the small shrine lit with red Christmas bulbs holding three tiny cups of rice wine set atop cans of Heineken, several generations of extended family bustled back and forth at work in the kitchen. An old great grandmother wandered down the stairs at one point, watching me eat with idle curiosity but saying nothing. A middle-aged woman in purple top decorated with rhinestones spelling out the name 'Cindy' showed me how to eat the spread in front of me, which included a large plate of greens, skewers of satay pork, fried spring rolls, and rice paper wrapping with a peanut and chili dipping sauce. Delicious stuff, and one of the best meals I've eaten in Vietnam yet.



Hoi An's other attraction besides history is its legions of custom-fit tailor shops, and after a break for a cold drink, I browsed around yesterday before finding a place that is going to make me a fully tailored suit for $53 -- whether that's a great deal or a big rip-off I don't really know, but I'm off for the adjustments now, so we'll soon see!

Next Stop is Vietnam

The roads out of Beijing weren't nearly as clogged as they had been coming in the previous night and I actually got to the airport on Friday too early to check in. When I did after about an hour of sitting around, I only got to sit around more in the boring-est airport gate ever (no shops, no food, not even a free plug to recharge my iPod at). On the plane I sat across the aisle from one of China's famed Awful Phlegmatic Old Men, who rearranged the contents of his sinuses every twenty minutes or so through the course of the flight and bossed at the stewardesses. I was also unable to avoid the bad Hong Kong teenage-pregnancy drama (she's the spoiled daughter of a rich lawyer, who's furious! he's the son of a poor laborer! can they make a life when they run off together?) on the in-flight entertainment because they actually broadcast it over the PA system. I got some subtler entertainment in Guangzhou, where we stopped for a connection, as everybody stampeded off, pushing past the two hapless girls checking our onward tickets, in order to reach... closed emigration desks. The officers showed up eventually, but further delays there meant I didn't get a chance to burn my last renminbi at the cafes in Guangzhou airport, which looked to be considerably nicer than Beijing's.

Flying into a strange airport somewhere in Asia late at night definitely ranks up there with my least favorite past-times. When I saw my flight from Beijing wasn't scheduled to get into Vietnam until 9:20, I made arrangements with the hostel I'm staying at here, an Aussie outfit with pretty good referrals online, to pick me up at Hanoi airport. Unfortunately, when I got through customs (the immigration officer gave me a sort of smirk when he looked at my passport... getting old, or maybe just scruffy) and out into the terminal, there was no one there.

In the course of flying out of Beijing I had hooked up with another guy, a fellow ex-English teacher (in his case, Seoul) from New York City named Greg who as coincidence would have it was going to the same hostel in Hanoi. We wandered around the small terminal for a bit in search of a payphone that we could use to call the hostel and have them send someone out; but the only phone kiosks were trying to sell us SIM cards for cell phones we didn't have, and none of the "helpful" tourist information desks would let us use their phones. So we bit the bullet and decided to try a taxi.

Pretty much everything that the guide warned us about ended up happening. After cutting our way through the crowd of touts, we picked out a guy with a shiny new minivan who assured us he could take us straight to where we wanted to go. "How much?" I asked. "Metered!" he replied. Well, no worries then. Except that a minute after pulling out he explained that we would need to pay $2 per person for a ticket to get on the highway. Unless we would prefer to pay him $20 flat without the meter? This is a ride that shouldn't have cost us more than $12 or so, but the other fellow I was traveling with got him down to $18. We cruised through the oh-so-important ticket gates without stopping.

Well, we passed through the dark on the highway into Hanoi. After about 15 minutes we entered the city proper, and shortly afterwards we pulled up in front of a hotel. A young Vietnamese guy came to the door, "Hanoi Backpackers' Hotel?" he asked in English (most people here speak it, it seems, at least if they have something to sell you), flashing a fading business card with the hostel's name and address on it. Except that.. this pretty clearly wasn't the place. Lonely Planet explicitly warned of copycat hotels paying airport taxis to take unsuspecting guests to an overpriced imitation, so we weren't about to get out the cab. Not that we would've been in danger or anything -- just resoundingly ripped off. I attempted to get the cabdriver to tell us what address we were at -- it clearly wasn't the one on business card the guy was waving in my face -- while Greg insisted to them that we weren't staying here. "The main hotel is full, we built a second place!" the guy with the business card said at first. After a minute or two it became, "We moved!" Then, after a few more futile tries, "New name!" Yeah, right. We weren't buying it, and eventually the cab driver, who was not a particularly good actor, made a show of "confusion" and wanting to check the address we had first showed him again. Eventually we extricated ourselves and left the fake hostelers to the rest of their evening, and our cabdriver pulled out a cellphone to call the real place and get directions. He took us there in about five minutes and we grudgingly paid him the $18 (he hadn't exactly earned it), then checked into the hostel, which the missed pick-up aside has been great.

All part of the adventure!

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Hanoi is a very pretty city, thanks to the French colonial legacy; lots of old ochre-yellow buildings, tree-shaded boulevards, and a lake near the Old Quarter where I'm staying. Unlike China, where the car is taking over, here most people still get around on two wheels -- Yamaha and Honda scooters fill the streets, with two or three people clinging to the back as they zip around. (Coming in from the airport, I saw one with a huge load of roses, easily four feet by four feet, bundled on top of the back of one; another, carrying several sacks of miscellaneous junk, had a woman crouching down on the running boards between the driver's legs as they hurtled along the highway.) They're cheaper and many times more numerous than car taxis (not to mention more persistent), so I've already taken a ride on a few of them -- it's mildly terrifying but also a fun way to see the streets.

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, which I had been planning to see, was unfortunately closed for Friday; so I'm 0 for 2 on my Embalmed Former Communist Leaders checklist. I did pass by the front of the monument, which is massive and which has huge red-and-yellow-starred flags lining the ground. Ho himself apparently expressed wishes for a simple cremation, but I suppose the party knows best. I went to a few sights here, including the old French prison where John McCain, along with several other downed American pilots, was imprisoned during the war. They still have his flight suit there, in addition to the guillotine used by the French colonial regime on Vietminh insurgents prior to their victory in the north. I also checked out the Temple of Literature, where old Confucian students got their doctorates engraved in stone stelae mounted atop statues of turtles. Lunch was at a nice little cafe near the market district; if nothing else, I can thank the French for introducing cafe culture. They even have Orangina! My last stop this afternoon was the Army Museum, full of captured French and American war materiel and lots of exhibits about the Vietnamese wars; heavily slanted to match the official line as you might expect, but still interesting.

This evening I wandered around the lake area for a bit and bought a pair of cheap flip-flops, then went to watch roi nuoc, or Vietnamese water puppets. The show was about an hour and full of traditional music and vignettes of Vietnamese village life, interspersed with mythical creatures and a few ancient legends. Most of the puppets were not too elaborate in their decoration but they could perform some pretty clever tricks with them; it was a fun outing.

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Overall my first day in Vietnam has been pretty good, the only exceptions being the initially unfavorable introduction and the humidity, which as you would imagine is omnipresent. Tomorrow I'm going to go out to Halong Bay, an inlet full of towering limestone pillars and caves; the trip should take the full day, and I think there is a bit of kayaking involved in addition to a boat cruise. I also got a flight on to my next stop, Hue; I'll leave for there on Sunday afternoon and the continue south with stops in Hoi An and Quy Nhon over the course of the next few days.

For now, though, it's time for shower number three of the day.

Yakshimusiz

("Hello" in Uyghur.)

After many long hours on the road I have finally found rest in the cool grape trellis-shaded oasis of Turpan. While the rest of Xinjiang has actually not been nearly as hot as I had expected, Turpan sits in a desert basin that is the second-lowest elevated point on earth, and my bus passed over flat, baking rock desert for several hours on the way here.

Turpan is considerably more touristed than other places I've visted in Xinjiang, even more so than Kashgar was. If the "Aisu Kohii" (Ice Coffee) signs in Japanese in the hotel I'm staying at weren't enough of a clue, there are some very persistent local touts, suggesting tours and hotels and this and that as soon as I first stepped off the bus. One of them, a younger Uyghur fellow with great English skills, showed me to / followed me to the hotel where I actually wanted to stay and then further in search of an internet cafe yesterday; I finally managed to extricate myself and this morning opted to set off on my own instead. I'm sure I would've had a fine time with him, but I'm just not ready to surrender my independent traveler status yet. The backpacker cafe attached to the hotel rents aging single-gear bicycles and I took one out for an hour, taking a leisurely (if slightly wobbly) ride down through the back streets of the Uyghur old town to arrive at the Emin Minaret, a lovely piece of Islamic architecture dating to the 1700s with lots of intricate brickwork and geometric patterns appearing in and out of the shaded halls.

After that, I took a cab to the ruins of Jiaohe, an old city perched on top of a leaf-shaped mesa surrounded by narrow canyons. Homes built into rock outcroppings and thick mud-brick walls give the surviving ruins the appearance of Luke Skywalker's Tatooine home after a particularly thorough stormtrooper attack; it was definitely worth the trip, and while Turpan has several other surrounding sites on the standard tour, I was fine with my limited solo foray. Afterwards, I lounged around and finished Guns, Germs, and Steel, my reading material for this trip (and one of the best books I've read) during the hottest part of the day, and then took a walk through the local bazar where I bought some samsas (fatty mutton pockets; mostly fat, in this case). There's a grape harvesting festival going on in Turpan (home of Xinjiang's most famous vines; walking through the Uyghur quarter to the minaret again this evening, I passed several walled courtyard homes with huge racks of grapes hanging, freshly harvested), with some traditional Uyghur dancing going on in the city square last night. Somehow I don't think traditional Uyghur dancing usually involves fireworks and light shows and choreographed fountain displays, though, and in any case the crowds were too thick for me to push my way close enough to see anything. Maybe this evening, or maybe just more relaxing.

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It's been three days ago now, but I was successful in flagging down a bus for the long haul across the Taklamakan desert, through no help from the people at the actual bus station in Niya though. A big orange sleeper bus passing through the traffic circle pulled over at my desperate wave and after confirming that they were stopping in Korla, I hopped on. As I did so a small chorus of "hello!"s came from the Chinese and Uyghur students laid out in the racks of beds, three rows of two bunks all the way to the back of the bus. After paying one of the guys by the door I clambered up onto a narrow bunk just behind the driver. It took some careful positioning; those bunks weren't really made for someone my height. But it definitely made for an interesting way to travel.

Soon after pulling out of Niya we entered the desert. In order to prevent the sand from encroaching on the highway cutting through the miles and miles of dunes, the Chinese engineers who built it constructed well stations along the way, with long stretches of drip irrigation hoses feeding a shielding barrier of shrubs along either side of the road. The sky was still gray and the horizon hazy, though not as thick as it had been in Hotan two days before; the dunes stretched on to the edge of vision. I didn't see any desert bandits, although I kept an eye out the whole trip. The driver's cassette tapes of Uyghur pop music blared in my ears from the speaker next to my head. A young guy with features that looked almost Persian played card games with his girlfriend in the bunk across from me. We passed, in a quick flash, a large blue cargo truck whose front end was completely smashed in, in front of which it looked like someone had set up a picnic lunch. We passed a well worker in a conical straw hat and orange safety vest, out checking irrigation lines in the dusk.

The bus bounced along over undifferentiated stretches of desert as it gradually got dark. We stopped for dinner at a rest area where I got a highly over-priced (almost $1.50!) plate of noodles, meat and vegetables the Uyghurs call laghman (think ra men). Some of the students who had seen me board earlier called me over and we chatted while I ate, they sipped scalding tea, and the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "True Lies" played in dubbed Chinese in the background. They were young, probably high school age, on their way to the technical school they attended. Where was I from? How did I like Xinjiang? What about the food? What did I think about China's development? How about those Olympics, eh? After a while there we boarded the bus again and I began to doze in the darkness, coming to full wakefulness at the blare of the driver's horn every now and then to see the flares of oil pumping stations out in the distant desert. We arrived on the outskirts of Korla near 3:00 AM Beijing time (1:00 AM Xinjiang; I'm on a weird hybrid where I wake up early, eat lunch and dinner late, and end up ready for bed by what's really only about 8:00 PM local time) where I luckily caught a waiting taxi to a rather down-scale hotel. Despite the late hours, people were still coming and going; the girls at the desk, thoroughly amused by my complete inability to speak any Chinese without the aid of a phrasebook, gave me a room for 80 yuan; pretty near a deal (the cheapest I could find in Niya had been a double for 100, or about 15 dollars), except that it turned out to be a three meter by three meter cube with adjoining shower / toilet corridor.

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Saturday I woke up to my alarm and the room attendant pounding on my door; she and a guy with a clipboard came in, inspected something in my bathroom, and left. I showered and headed out to see a bit of Korla. Korla is a modern city, considerably more Chinese now than Uyghur, but it is also much cleaner and nicer than Urumqi and not nearly as big or sprawling as Beijing. I wandered past some storefronts selling appliances and plumbing fixtures before finding an internet cafe, where I made contact with Michael of The Opposite End of China blog, who is a very nice guy and whose sun-dried tomatoes looked very nice if any of you readers happen to be a Chinese restaurant owner looking to stock some. I am not, but he still very graciously arranged to meet for lunch. I met him, as well as Bruce, a Scottish guy teaching English there, and his chihuahua, for spicy pumpkin and pepper dumplings. After some phone calls, arrangements were made to meet at a shaded spot down by the riverside. There were awnings and raised platforms set up at which to relax and eat roasted chicken -- except that, according to the lady who came by and asked us for 30 yuan for the privelege of sitting there, that the guy who usually made the chicken had ran off with all the money and now there was none. Whoops.

The rest of Korla's English-teaching expat community was a small group of about 10 in all; they were all very friendly and welcoming considering I really didn't know any of them. I'm guessing they probably don't get too many visitors. Some people went swimming, I relaxed in the shade; after a few hours there, we went back to the city, where the Tarim Oil English Association, a group of about ten Chinese folks working in the oil company offices with an interest in improving their English, took us all collectively out to Mongolian hotpot dinner at the local "Fat Cow" restaurant. It was delicious stuff, and we were all sweating from the steam and the spices. After that I parted ways with the Korlans and headed back to my hotel, and then caught the bus here to Turpan on Sunday.

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Tomorrow I take the bus back to Urumqi, where I will maybe do a bit of shopping for Uyghur music video CDs (I've been watching enough of them on the buses, I ought to bring back something to show for it; but if you want to see some now, check around on The Opposite End of China blog, where Michael's posted several). I fly back to Beijing on the 29th, and then on to the jungles of Nam on the 30th, where I finally get to start putting my Larium to work.

Khosh!

The Silk Road Is In Need of Some Road Work

At least the section my bus went bouncing along over for 10 hours today sure was. I'm in the small Uyghur oasis town of Hotan, formerly a jade crafting and carpet weaving center on the silk route, this evening just kind of dusty and low-key. The driver laid on the horn every time we passed trucks carrying big tankers of gasoline, Uyghur families on donkey carts, minibuses and motorcycles. Stretches of desert were interspersed with stands of slender beeches lining the oasis towns we passed through on the way from Kashgar. My seat companion was an older fellow from Suat (mispelled?), Pakistan ("the Switzerland of Pakistan", he tells me) travelling with four Pakistani lawyer friends to Hotan. We chatted a bit and watched pirated Jackie Chan movies and Uyghur music videos over the bus DVD player. I got into Hotan at around 5:00 local time and after two failed attempts managed to find a place that would take me; should've bargained harder for my double, which is of dubious quality, but it was only about 15 bucks for the night really. A friendly Uyghur bus cop helped me figure out the schedule for the bus to Niya, an even smaller oasis town further down the road that I'm checking out on the recommendation of a fellow traveler; if I make it there, I will check out the local Mazar tomb, then take the cross-desert highway bus the following day (Friday) to Korla on the other side of the Taklamakan. Let's hope for no sandstorms.

Karakul Lake was a mixed experience. We left in the morning on Monday and made it to the bus station with plenty of time, partly because the bus sat around and waited another 15 minutes after it was supposed to go to see if it could fill the last two empty seats. We picked up a Kyrgyz fellow in a suit and felt hat at a gas station and then headed southwest for the mountains. The scenery was gorgeous, red rock canyons and huge alluvial sand fields. I was unable to enjoy it fully for two reasons: one, some French guy had taken the seat by the window that opened, so I wasn't able to get my camera out past the glass (the seat was actually mine by the tickets we had, but no one sits in their actual ticketed seats in China anyhow); and two, I had made the mistake of chugging half a liter of water in the morning and reached near-bursting point about an hour into the trip. I was getting close to doing something drastic, like hijacking the bus, when we finally stopped to let some local guy off at a compound out in the cliffs, and I took the opportunity to sprint out and enjoy a solid minute of blissful relief. Anyhow, after that, I was able to enjoy things much more, despite the lingering head cold; the Lord of the Rings soundtrack makes a particularly good companion to the Ghez river canyons, if you happen to be passing that way yourself some day.

We arrived at Karakul Lake at around 11:30 local time and began a walk around the edge. Again, the towering snow-capped mountain faces made for beautiful scenery; but the high elevation also made hell for my already beleagured sinuses, and I was light-headed and headachey from the altitude. Kyrgyz nomads live in this area, renting out yurts to tourists, and we walked through their herds of yaks and camels as we started to circle the lake counter-clockwise. After a bit the two Israelis split off in the direction of one of the mountain base camps, where they were planning on camping for a few days; Miguel (the fluent guy from Michigan) and I had a late lunch of extremely hard bagels and rice with stewed vegetables with a local Kyrgyz family. It was getting on four by this point, and he decided to carry on around the lake; I was still winded, sick, and tired, so I opted to just head back towards the road where the yurts were and call it a day.

It took me about another two hours of stumbling through the marshy grass surrounding the lake to get back to the yurts, where I bargained a bit with the local guy and got myself a meal and a bed for 30 yuan. By this point I was feeling mildly feverish and about ready to crash, so it was all I could do to stay up and exchange a few pleasantries with the German couple (one of them Chinese-German) also staying in my yurt. They seemed pretty suprised that I had come up there already being sick, which I guess was a hint that it wasn't the brightest move on my part.

I passed out almost instantly after finishing the meal but woke up at midnight from a full bladder again and never got back to sleep the entire rest of the night. I was cold despite piles of covers; the "bed" (blankets on the yurt floor, which was the ground) was hard and digging into my back no matter which way I turned; my head was throbbing; I think I may have been hyperventilating a bit. Not the best sleep of my life... I think I got two hours, four hours tops.

On the plus side, let it be said that no matter how freezing and miserable you are, the stars over Karakul Lake at midnight really are gorgeous.

I came back to Kashgar early yesterday morning by catching a ride with a Kyrgyz guy in a pickup; there was supposed to be a bus, but it didn't end up coming before he did, and I just wanted to get the hell out of dodge so I was willing to pay the 60 yuan he was asking. I came back to my hotel and collapsed for a few hours, then gave the ticket queues another lunge for the bus to Hotan today. I know travelling as long as I am, I'm going to have good days and bad; the beautiful scenery notwithstanding, Monday was pretty rough. But this is a marathon, not a sprint, and I'm hoping for good things in Niya tomorrow. Till the next oasis.

Kashgar

We boarded the plane to Kashgar at dusk to the tunes, in my ears anyhow, of the Black Hawk Down soundtrack. One of the tarmac safety officers rode past my window on a bicycle as we pulled out of the gate. An hour and a half later my flight arrived at around midnight Beijing time, which is officially the same thing as Xinjiang time, even though Xinjiang is actually two hours behind Beijing. The taxi drivers demanded 40 yuan for a ride to the hotel that should've been 10 by the meter. I split the cost with a backpacking girl from Columbia studying Chinese in Shanghai. The hotel, the Chingi Bagh, has cheap dorms in various states of disrepair. My roomates include an Orthodox Jewish couple from Israel and a guy from Michigan who's currently 10 weeks into a trip all over China. Kind of puts my trek to shame, but then he is fluent in Chinese. Last night we were joined by a guy from Switzerland. There's a sitcom pitch in here somewhere.

Kashgar is a much nicer city than Urumqi. Less overdeveloped, less polluted, less sprawl. Uyghurs outnumber Chinese and not the other way around, although a giant statue of Mao still looms over the People's Park square (the People's Park has a entry fee to get inside). Much of the old city is in the process of being torn down but there are still plenty of back alleys, kebab street vendors, men with sun-creased faces and white skullcaps sitting in the shade of trees and noon, and women in headscarves and veils to give the city a Central Asian, rather than a Chinese, feel. The sights -- the Id Khah mosque, the Abakh Khoja tomb, and the Sunday Market -- do have a well-worn tourist trail running through them though; French and Chinese tour groups nearly outnumbered the Uyghur men and their sons herding in their cows, fat-bottomed goats, donkey carts and even one or two camels at the livestock market this morning. It's rather sad to see, though of course I'm a tourist here as well.

I successfully managed to wedge my way to the front of the queue at the bus station so tomorrow I will be heading west up the Karakorum Highway to Lake Karakul, where I will probably be spending the night in a Kyrgyz yurt. I've managed to catch a bad sinus headache / head cold in the past day or so but copious amounts of water, Emergen-C powder, and garlicky Szechuan noodles from the traveler's cafe at the base of our hotel will hopefully be enough to hold it at bay. Gastro-intestinal status is currently rated at 75% of optimum levels, and hopefully holding.

Will check back again either when I get back into Kashgar, or otherwise from Hotan, my next stop along the Southern Silk road.

Wild West China

I'm in Urumqi now. Urumqi is kind of reminscent of Ulaan Bator, in that is is big and sprawling and dusty and sort of a pit. But it's my gateway to the rest of Xinjiang, so here I am until this evening, when I catch a flight down to Kashgar on the rim of the Taklamakan. I spent the flight over here from Beijing watching a young Chinese girl and her father read old Garfield comics in Chinese. Most people in Urumqi are Chinese, although there are still young women in head scarves and old men in fur hats and street vendors selling nan bread and fruit to remind you that this isn't the coastal provinces any more.

I hiked a section of the Great Wall on Tuesday. I now have the utmost respect for any Mongolians who tried tackling that thing. The section our group of twenty hiked up to was remote and partially ruined, but free of Chinese tourists and commercial reconstructions. There was one guy selling drinks at a watchtower, but having just scrambled up there with the weight of two liters of water and a camera bag myself, I couldn't argue too much with the five yuan he was asking. This small bit of entrepreneurism notwithstanding it was a good hike and a good way to celebrate #24.

This morning I checked out the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Museum, which was definitely worth seeing, although maybe not for the reasons intended. I did see the Loulan Beauty, and some presentations of native culture and dress, but the biggest eye-opener was the exhibit captions.

Covering an area of 1.66 million square kilometers, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a treasure land in the northwestern bordering region in our motherland with vast land and richly endowed recourses. The extended Silk Road linked the eastern and western civiliations. Being situated deep in the hinterland, it conceals the deep secret of the converged ancient civiliations of the world.

Xinjiang has been the multi-national homeland from ancient times. Forty-seven nationalities live here today, among them 13 brother nationalities, such as Uyghur, Han, Kazak, Hui, Khalkas, Mongolian, Xibe, Tajik, Uzbek, Daur, Manchu, Tartar, Russian, etc. have lived in Xinjiang for generations. For a long time, they have been cooperated as one family to build and safeguard the borderland. Under the glory of the nationality policy of the Party, precious traditional cultures of various nationalities have received effective protection, inhertiance, and development. In the historical process of the Development of Western Regions, various nationalities are more united to construct together a harmonious society. We hold this exhibition of Display of Xinjiang Nationality Custom to represent the gorgeous conditions and customs of the 12 ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, and to show the splendor of the beautiful rarity of treasure house of Chinese national culture.

Right. That's a direct quote from the "Preface" to the minorities exhibit. Pretty bold stuff for a museum where the only real Uyghurs evident were the stone masons tiling a room under renovation on the second floor. Most plaques were along similar lines; Xinjiang has always been a part of China; every minority group in Xinjiang works together; everything is going great and that's the way everyone wants it! Nice and subtle stuff. There was also an exhibit on the Communist revolution and Xinjiang's role in that, although I noted they didn't bother including English translations for that section. Ahem.

And then there's this, seen on a woman's t-shirt yesterday:

War is Peace
Oceania

Man, this place is wierd.

Addendum - The Great Firewall is blocking me from viewing my blog (whoops, should've taken down that link to my paper on Xinjiang, maybe) but obviously not from the Blogger posting infrastructure. I can probably still read comments through this, but there's always e-mail if you want to get in touch directly.

The Adventure Begins

Yesterday, in what in retrospect may appear to be a rather drastic move, I left my home of two years in Karatsu, Japan, and launched myself into the beginning of an eight-week trek through Asia and Africa. After saying my last goodbyes and sitting on a China Air flight for two and a half hours, touched down mid-afternoon in China's capital city of Beijing.

The pollution has, thus far, not been as bad as I was initially dreading (I gather it's worst in the winter, when everyone turns on the heaters). 2008 Olympics ads are everywhere and there's plenty of construction and demolition going on all around. My hostel is a bit of a backpacker trap but is located down a relatively authentic-looking hutong so there's a bit of character to the area, if not necessarily the place itself.

My time in Beijing is limited -- just two full days, really -- so I'm getting a much abbreviated look at it and "Chinese" China; today I joined the throng to see Tianenmen and the Forbidden City, and baked myself on the cobblestones while taking pictures of Mao's portrait and old imperial roofing tiles. I don't think I'm going to be able to upload those pictures till I get back (I'm shooting RAW format, which usually requires post-processing before I can upload it to Flickr; there is a photo CD-burning place across the seat so I might check that out tomorrow). The palaces were also not too different from similar edifices I've viewed in Japan, Korea, or Mongolia; of course, this is where all those architectural designs originated from, so I'd say it was worth seeing. I did not manage to see Mao's body on display.

I have yet to eat any actual Chinese food (unless you count a self-heating chicken-and-rice box for lunch today), having dined out for two nights in a row at two different Uyghur restaurants in the area. Both were good (and spicy) so I think I'll do fine in terms of finding things to eat when I head west on Thursday. The language barrier, on the other hand, is still relatively daunting. I've sort of learnt some numbers, but haven't really been forced to muddle through yet, as I've only been to the touristy places. Of course, when I reach Xinjiang, I'll have to pack away the Mandarin phrasebook and break out the Uyghur one anyhow.

Tomorrow I am taking a hike along the Great Wall through a tour company a friend of mine recommended; it should be a small group and we should be going to a pretty remote (unreconstructed and uncrowded) section of the wall. Hopefully should be a good way to celebrate my 24th birthday.

Internet service at the hostel here is free as long as you can stand the impatient murmurings of the people queued up waiting to use it after you. I've probably abused my priveleges for long enough so I'll check back again next time.

Packing List

Hiking bag; Karrimor lightweight sleeping bag; waterproof bag cover; rain jacket; rain pants; day pack; camera bag; hiking boots; canteen; water bottle; collapseable cooking tins; lightweight long-sleeve athletic shirt; money belt; cash; tickets; passport photos; Aquarius powdered sports drink mix; bandannas; "Beetle versus Stag Beetle: Eternal Rivals" washcloth; Eskay hat; dust mask; hand wipes; Larium; Mosiguard DEET bug spray; first aid kit (pepto-bismol tablets, anti-diahrreal meds, allergy meds, motion sickness meds, bandages); flashlight; universal plug adaptor; bungee cord; alarm clock; pocket swiss-army knife; nail clippers; 4 AA batteries; two tubes of SPF 50, one tube of SPF 30 sunscreen; aloe vera gel; sunblock chapstick; Neosporin; Ibuprofen; tiger balm to keep the leeches at bay; black 30 GB iPod; two Muji spiral-bound notebooks; pen; Beijing map; East Asia map; Lonely Planet: China; Lonely Planet: Vietnam; Lonely Planet: Southeast Asia on a Shoestring; Lonely Planet Central Asia and Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebooks; Canon EF 50mm 1:1.8 II lens; lens cleaner cloth; camera battery charger; Canon Kiss Digital N SLR camera (not pictured); 2.5 GB worth of memory cards.


What am I forgetting?

Where In the World is MC MasterChef?

So, for the first time in recent memory I've managed to reach a sort of balance between work duties, blog and book reading (just started a book on post-colonial Africa, The State of Africa, which I'm hoping can help offer at least a general primer to a continent I find myself reading more and more about lately), and spending time with friends... which must mean it's about time to upend it all again. At the end of this month my contract with the Karatsu City Board of Education will finish — I'll save that story for another day — and I will return home to the land of the free and the home of the brave shortly thereafter. I have no job waiting for me and no clear sense of how I'm going to be able to make the transition from Japanese children's entertainer / occasional English teacher to young international relations professional — good luck for me will be managing to find an unpaid internship in D.C. some time next spring, since I don't have the master's degree and two or three year's working experience in government most think tanks seem to expect from their paid research assistants. What I get for spending my college summers working in a carpentry shop, I guess.

If I sound apprehensive about the whole taking the next step thing, well, major life transitions have never been a strong point of mine. But I do have a plan, of sorts, for a round-the-world return trip. After staying on in Japan for a week or two after my contract is up, I will then fly off mid-August to finally visit a long-delayed goal of mine, Xinjiang. This part of the world held fascination for me when I first began studying it senior year of college in part because of its remoteness — it's still hard to believe I will soon be kicking up dust in the deserts of western China. I'll be relying on the phrasebooks for both Uyghur and Mandarin, so as much as I'd like the chance I'm not sure how much I'll be able to connect with the local Uyghur peoples — though that may be just as well as it's my understanding that the PRC administration is clamping down hard on those who speak to foreigners about any of the controversies I studied in the course of writing my paper back in college. Right now I plan on visiting the cities of Urumqi, Turpan, Kashgar, and Korla (as well as a few smaller oasis towns along the way, probably) while skirting a counterclockwise circle around the Tarim basin over the course of about two weeks. Yes, I will be packing lots of sunscreen.

Assuming I don't meet an untimely end lost in the desert, I will then be flying back to Beijing and then south to Hanoi, taking another week to make my way overland to Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City; I've yet to work out an itinerary for this part of the grand tour yet, but many JETs have recommended Vietnam highly, so I'll be seeing what it has to offer (besides dengue fever). From HCM City I plan on crossing into Cambodia, visiting both Angkor Wat and the memorials to the Killing Fields if possible. Then it's border-hopping again, on to Bangkok, from which I will fly out to Johannesburg, South Africa (by way of the United Arab Emirates), and then connect for a flight inland to Lusaka, Zambia. One of my best friends from college currently lives in the Zambian bush as a volunteer with the Peace Corps, and I'll be spending another two weeks riding elephants, going on safaris, and farming fish there. A full month and a half after saying sayonara to Japan, I'll finally touch down in Boston late September, where I'll try to pay a visit to a few old professors before heading back home to Indiana and trying to figure out what to do with myself now. The whole ordeal promises to be both exciting and exhausting.

Depending on my ability to find internet access along the way, this blog will either be updated semi-frequently from the road for the benefit of friends, family, and the occasional outside reader; or otherwise not at all. So if reading about other peoples' vacations bores you to no end, you can probably safely ignore this space for the next two months or so (if you haven't been doing so already). When I get back, depending on my success in the Washington D.C. job market, I may be able to give more attention to other, more interesting topics; but if not, there are plenty of other interesting reads out there.

Once Upon A Time in the Steppes - Part Four

Read Part One // Read Part Two // Read Part Three

After finishing our lunch at the horse camp and throwing our bags into the bus we hit the road... or more accurately hit the dirt that was currently serving as road. We were heading the ruined monastery of Ovgon Khiid, where one of Mongolian Buddhism's founding figures, Zanabazar, once fled from rival armies. The guy chose a pretty good hiding spot, as we had to cross several horizons' worth of empty desert before coming across the rocky masses that sheltered the remnants of the shrine. The main temple ruins were apparently further back along a rocky, scrub-lined valley, but we contented ourselves with peeking inside a few of the contemporary shrines that a local family had been restoring since 1994. We were looking to get to Karakorum, site of Chinggis Khaan's old capital city, before evening, so we left the desert behind and eventually found our way to a road heading back eastwards.

We stopped twice along the way; the first time was at a massive ovoo next to the road. One of my favorite sights during our travels, ovoo are cairns of small rocks and blue silk banners which dot the Mongolian roadsides, mountaintops, and other spiritually important locales. We saw dozens during the course of our trip. Custom is to circle the ovoo three times (or, if driving past, honk in recognition), adding a lose rock from the ground to the pile if one is free; we took the opportunity to throw the blessed rice we had received from the shaman back in Darkhan while wishing for good fortune and safe travels.

Our next stop was for a mother and daughter from Holland who had apparently forgotten to circle their ovoos, and whose touring van had caught a flat out in the middle of nowhere. We invited them into the bus along with their translator, driver, and the affronting tire. We chatted for a while before arriving at around six in the evening and dropping them off in Karakorum, their destination and ours. Modern Karakorum is a small town with a Soviet-era flour factory and not much else; there is, however, the large Erdene Zuu Buddhist monastery, Mongolia's first. When we arrived it was closing, however, and the wind had kicked up strong, sending us and the small herd of baby goats hanging around outside the walls running for cover. We planned to come back the next morning, and retired to a ger camp and short drive away on the edge of town, sheltered by some nearby mountains and with a river running nearby.

The gers, as usual, were cozy, and that night after dinner the camp offered entertainment in the form of a small concert inside the dining tent; one old man playing the morin khuur (horse fiddle), one performing khuumi (throat singing) and one young girl in a purple leotard performing a cringe-inducing contortion act. After the concert, we were offered a chance to try the instruments ourselves firsthand, which was cool. (They did not suggest we try the contortions.) We finished the evening with some card games in our gers; outside it had gotten even colder, and the crackling wood stove was a welcome tent-mate.

The next morning we woke up to .. snow! As I mentioned before, we had been told to expect all variety of weather during the Mongolian spring, but as cold as it got during our R&R I didn't really expect to be enjoying snowclad hillsides in the middle of May. The snow meant we could forget about hot water in the ger camp, so showers were out that morning; it was pretty enough that nobody complained, though. After a quick breakfast we hiked up one of the low mountains next to the camp, to see a monument at the top commemorating three great kingdoms in Mongolian history: those of (if my notes are right) the Hunus, the Turks, and Chinggis Khaan's own Mongolian empire. I need to learn more Central Asian history; if anyone out there reading this happens to have recommendations for a good introductory primer on the region, feel free to drop a note in the comments.



After winding our way down the hillside past more snow-covered ovoo, we left our ger camp and went to see Erdene Zuu. The monastery's walls (capped with a hundred eight stupa crenelations) were built from the remnants of Chinggis' capital, of which nothing now remains save for two turtle-shaped cornerstones that once marked the outer boundaries of the city. I have to admit that Erdene Zuu, while housing some beautiful art and architecture, didn't really capture my attention in the way some of our other travels in Mongolia did. Though I'm not given to religious sentiments in general, I personally find the worldly withdrawal of Buddhist ritual monasticism an unsatisfying response to the "life of suffering" they see around them. As visually interesting as the confusing array of religious symbolism present in their art may be, I can't help but wonder how much reassurance lay-practitioners really derive from the thought that the monks whom they supported through tithing and donations have now passed on to enlightenment while they remain behind. It's not really for me to judge, I guess, but it all felt very ornate in an otherwise very barren land. Anyhow, we left the monastery and stopped on our way out of town to see the second surviving turtle rock — which was up on the mountainside quite a ways from the first, suggesting Karakorum's large size in its day. We ate a lunch of sausage and cucumber sandwiches in the van as we bounced along listening to a tape of Mongolian pop balads, travelling back in the direction of Ulaan Bator.

We weren't done with our travels yet, though, as we had one more stop planned: Khustain National Park, home of the Mongolian takhi, also known as Przewalski's wild horse. We arrived after several hours of driving and settled into the ger camp there, figuring we would go out to see the horses after dinner; we got word, however, that the wind was picking up and a nearby herd was likely going to start moving, so the best time to go seem them would be now. The takhi are true wild horses, genetically distinct from domesticated breeds or feral horses (domesticated horses that have escaped human captivity and gone wild). Short, stocky, and sandy-colored, they had vanished from their natural habitats until reintroduction programs begun in the 1990s started reintroducing them to Mongolian national parks like Khustai. The herd or around a dozen we saw, grazing at a distance of several hundred yards away (too far for my lens zoom to get a good capture, I'm afraid), had several pregnant females amongst it, and Khustai alone now has over 150 of the animals living in its area.

We saw some horses of the domesticated kind up close after dinner that evening, as two local cowboys were offering the chance to go on a dusk ride for something like two dollars per person. Though not as free ranging as our first experience — we went out in small groups of four and spent the entire ride tethered close to our two guides, so no unscheduled departures for me this time — it was still nice to ride out under clear night skies.



The next morning we had an early breakfast and made the drive back to Ulaan Bator, where our R&R officially concluded. We planned to return to the care of the national HFH offices for a few farewell ceremonies before our late evening flight out, but Batbold the national coordinator was busy in meetings for the moment so we stayed with our tour guides a little longer. We checked into the same hotel we stayed at our first night and got two rooms to store our bags in, then left with the tour bus to downtown UB in search of an internet cafe. There we filled our some surveys for HFH Mongolia and said some tearful goodbyes to our guide and translator, Ogi... until she came back some twenty minutes later, off work, and offered to show us around one last time at the national Natural History Museum that some of us had hoped to catch sight of while we were there. It was a bit of a whirlwind tour, as we had to meet Batbold for lunch soon afterwards, but we managed to see most everything on display — lots of unlucky stuffed animals, both native to Mongolia and otherwise, and one large exhibit of dinosaur bones, Mongolia's claim to international paleontological fame. No cast replicas either, these were the actual bones dug out of the Gobi rock — including, under protective glass case, the famous fossil of the protoceratops locked in combat with a small raptor. Pretty cool stuff, although unfortunately we took no pictures. After that we did say goodbye to Ogi, and went by cab to meet Batbold for a quick lunch.

Then it was shopping time — an hour and a half in the Ulaan Bator State Department Store. I'm guessing shelves have improved considerably since Soviet times, as almost all floors were filled with shoppers stocking up, as we were, on souvenirs, food, and gifts. Mongolia HFH evidently didn't have their own t-shirts, so I had to buy a general Mongolian flag one for myself, as well as a patch for the old hiking bag; I also brought back after much deliberation a horse fiddle for Ms. Riddarfjarden, who is a cello player and quite fond of their sound. Though still half-full from our late lunch, it was then time to head on to our thank-you dinner at ... yes, Mongolian barbecue! Although technically, speaking, it's neither, it was still pretty delicious. We also received thank-you certificates and met with one of the Mongolia HFH national affiliate's board members and his young son, who really didn't want to be there with us, even when bribed with ice cream. The rest of the HFH folks were very appreciative, though, and it was a nice meal, albeit a little rushed at the end as we had one more sight to see.

The national Tumen Ekh ensemble performs traditional Mongolian dance, songs, throat singing, moriin khuur, and more contortionists. It was a great performance.. so suffice it so say I was extremely frustrated when my camera battery died off five minutes into the performance. You'll just have to trust me when I say it was impressive, I suppose. After that we took a drive up to Zaisan Memorial, which I was able to briefly capture thanks to five minutes of quick battery-charging in the bathroom after the concert. A large hill overlooking the whole of Ulaan Bator below, Zaisan on that evening was swarming with recently graduated high school students, wedding parties, and other folks out enjoying the panoramic views; we made quite a few friends with the younger kids, whose English put our shogakkusei here in Japan to shame. The monument, dedicated to Russian-Mongolian friendship, had some pretty classic Soviet-era murals too. Eventually we made our way back down and regretfully headed back to the hotel to pack up and leave UB behind.



We took off from Ulaan Bator at around midnight and touched down in Seoul at around four in the morning local time. There we dragged ourselves through customs — just a tip, if you buy duty-free alcohol in Chinggis Khaan International Airport, remember your receipt if you don't want to run afoul of liquid carry-on rules when you transfer in Korea — and collapsed onto the waiting couches. I stayed up while the others napped, and watched the airport wake up around us; I had just enough energy for a last-minute run to the Dunkin' Donuts on the far side of the terminal for some jelly-filled fuel before it was time to board again at around 7:30. From there it was a short flight back to Fukuoka and the breaking of the fellowship; my Fearless Leader duties discharged with everyone back safe and sound, I caught the train back to Karatsu and began the task of catching up on about two week's worth of sleep.

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Ok, so, now it's retrospective time. While two years living in Japan may have reduced the number of Habitat trips I organize on a yearly basis considerably from its peak in college, I think I can say that my Fearless Leading skills have not been totally dulled from disuse. While I know there were instances where I could've handled things better, for the most part I think I was able to stay calm, flexible, and on top of most problems that cropped up, both beforehand and during the trip. I can say that I don't think I would've been able to pull together all the disparate components of the trip and kept things organized and on a relatively smooth course had I not had the experience of leading similar (if not always as complex) excursions back in the states. While my team members said some kind things about my leadership afterwards, the truth is it was the Mongolia HFH and Darkhan affiliates who made our time as rewarding as it was, and my role was largely that of a facilitator for those experiences, a role which I find myself happy to play. I have worked with a lot of Habitat affiliates — over two dozen at least — in my years of volunteering with the organization and Mongolia HFH was definitely one of the best I've ever built with, in terms of providing real, rewarding work for its Global Village team participants. I would highly recommend it, and Mongolia, to anyone as a destination worth exploring.

I recently read this post on the slacktivist blog about the rationales behind mission trips and other service programs; although our team was independent of any church affiliation and the group a largely areligious one, I still think this example (speaking of a hypothetical trip to build a schoolhouse in Haiti) would apply to our excursion as well. Speaking to the question of, "couldn't we use the money on service programs some better way", he writes:

But the point of these mission trips is not only to get the school built. That's part of it, but it's not the only goal. The mission trip is also designed to give the American youth group a tangible, visceral stake in the fate of the Haitian community. This is vital for the people in Haiti too. ... It's unlikely that the youth group, the church, or any other given community here would raise the same amount of money without the personal stake of the trip itself.

The purpose of the mission trip is not exclusively to change the Haitian community where the school is to be built. Part of the purpose of the trip is also to change the young Americans who are going there, and to change the community that sends them. Part of the reason for such trips is to nurture a sense of empathy, of solidarity, and an ethos of service -- to create and maintain the capacity to care whether or not children in Haiti have a decent place to go to school, and to create and maintain the desire to help.

It's a big world, and there are no shortage of problems in it. Mongolia is a big country, with its own share of problems as well. I hope that our team's contributions — over 600,000 yen worth, once I get the last of the donations sent along — can be used as a seed for future investment in affordable housing in Darkhan, and I know that there are two families there who now have strong, decent housing in part thanks to our efforts. I have to think that counts for something, but I also know it's not enough to stop there. If my work as team leader, and the far more critical work of the local Habitat employees, guys like Baynaa and Batbold, has helped spread the message that the people of Mongolia are worth caring about, then I think I can consider this trip an accomplishment.

Hopefully there will be more to come.

Once Upon A Time in the Steppes - Part Three

Read Part One // Read Part Two // Read Part Four

Ok, here it is, late as usual; part three of my Mongolian travels.

Sunday morning was gray and cold as we woke up, but sleeping an extra hour helped make up somewhat for the late night of partying it up at "Club Scorpion". Baynaa, Bob the translator from our first tour around Darkhan, and our driver Baatar met us with the van at nine. With Sunday off, we had made a plan to visit Amarbayasgalant Khiid, an old Buddhist monastery and shrine west of Darkhan. After first stopping at the grocery store to pick up bread, sausage, and cheese for a picnic lunch, we drove for about an hour before turning off paved road onto a dirt track. After fording a few small streams — one big lesson learned from our trip in Mongolia was, "cars that you would not necessarily assume to be off-road vehicles, can in fact be used as such" — and driving on for about another hour, we reached the monastery complex at around noon.

Amarbayasgalant is one of Mongolia's greatest architectural treasures, having survived the advent of the Communists in 1937 with only about a quarter of the complex's temples destroyed. It was built by the Manchu emperor in the 1730s, and as such shares lots of stylistic similarities with other Buddhist temples I've visited in Korea and Japan, though the red ochre walls and wooden roofs gave it a distinctive look of its own. Restoration work supported by UNESCO aid and visitors' fees has been ongoing since 1975 and about 70 monks currently live there, one of whom showed us around the halls.



After we walked around the main temple complex Baynaa and Bob told us we would be driving further back in the valley to where a collection of stupas was perched on the slope. We left the monastery complex at the valley center, and bounced across the fields in the van. As we approached the stupas we started to pass through stands of birch trees, which stretched out northwards towards the mountains. It was gorgeous countryside for a picnic. We forded a small river running between the birch forest; the stupas were in sight cresting the hilltop ahead of us.

We started to ford another river up ahead... and sunk to a stop.

There are a lot of things to worry about when you're leading a group of eleven people on an international volunteering trip. And I did no shortage of worrying this trip. But there we were, stuck in a river in the middle of nowhere, and I have to say I wasn't worried. Yes, our back wheels were sunk six inches under the riverbed. Yes, after we all carefully tiptoed our way out onto the riverbank on a log (that water was cold) to reduce the weight, and sat back to watch our driver give it a second try, all that produced was a big froth of bubbles and some smoke from our equally submerged tailpipe. Still: not worried. Yes, the monastery was by this point a loooong walk away, and who knows how long it would take us to get back to Darkhan. But you've just got to figure this sort of thing happens a lot in Mongolia, and Baynaa, our driver Bataar, and Bob were clearly doing their best to figure out some sort of solution. So: sit back, relax, enjoy the scenery, and trust the locals to know what they're doing.

Deliverance arrived in the form of four monks (two older, two young boys) in a battered old Russian jeep. We were lucky, since we could've been waiting there for hours; instead it was more like twenty minutes. They happened to be on their way up to the stupas, where there was another small quarters for them, the caretakers. Fishing a rope out of the back of their jeep, we tied it to the front of our van and they lurched forward — only to have the rope fly off with a snap as it broke. Undaunted, Baynaa and Bataar then sprinted up the hill to the monk's house, coming back with a six-foot steel cable that they once again set about securing as we watched and shared some cookies with the two young monks-in-training. With a lurch, a groan of the cable, a splash, and a cheer from us onlookers, the van came free! And so we climbed pack in and carefully made our way up the hill after the monks, coming to a stop next to their house just a few yards away from the stupas and another small shrine.

We celebrated our escape with a picnic lunch of dried fruit, delicious sausage and cheese, and at this point very crumbly bread. Afterwards one of the monks, a middle-aged fellow who had learned English during a four-year stay in Switzerland, showed us inside the shrine where we admired the paintings and icons. We then hiked up a ways further above the stupas, getting a view of the valley below.



Eventually it was time to head back; the monks accompanied us down, but this time we all got out before the van attempted the river crossing and it went over without a problem. We spent the four hours back playing twenty questions, and had a late dinner at about nine in the evening.

The next day we were back to work, with me on the first house. We started the morning doing some insulation work, filling the cracks between the wall tops and the wooden frames at the roof's base with cut up cement bagging. It was a bit of a slow day, getting back into the work routine, but in the afternoon we began installing "shipu", which is the Mongolian word (actually borrowed from Russian) for the big red fiberglass shingles that formed the house's roof. In the evening we visited a restaurant mentioned in the Lonely Planet, the "Texas Cafe"; I would not necessarily have expected to be eating tex-mex food in Mongolia, but the place itself had all the touches of a US steakhouse chain and the food turned out to be pretty good. In the evening we came back to the hotel and I watched some Mark Wahlberg-is-a-crazy-stalker movie with the others. Bad, extremely bad.

Tuesday was our last full day of work, and I spent it working on the second house. The wind was kicking up dust so we were invited inside the family ger, where we all sat around the stove in a circle watching Celine Dion music videos on the small television and making roofing nails, Mongolian-style — cut out a circle of rubber from some old strips of tire, place a bottle cap on top, and pound a nail through the cap and rubber to complete it. We got a pretty good system going between the five of us, and the morning passed quickly; that afternoon I got back up on the roof and helped install more shingles with the construction supervisor Ghana and Chotto the homeowner. We broke early at around four and took a trip to the local "black market", where the others bought clothes and I watched the locals play billiards outdoors. We had another dinner at the Texas cafe, and I spent a while in the local net cafe attempting to catch up on e-mail before preparing to head back and pack up for our departure the next day. That, at least, was the plan.

So, remember how I said that going to a club in Mongolia was an interesting experience, but that it wasn't necessarily one that I was keen to repeat ("how-did-I-get-myself-into-this" interesting, not "boy-this-is-fun" interesting)? Well... so much for that. Because one disco outing is just not enough, it somehow happened that we were to go clubbing again on our last night in Darkhan — not my idea, I can assure you, but Baynaa and the other Habitat folks seemed enthusiastic when the suggestion reached them. So enthusiastic, in fact, that it became pretty clear they expected that we would all be going again, despite the fact that many of us (me included) were tired and would prefer spending the night packing and preparing for our last morning in Darkhan. Well, being the responsible leader that I am, I went along anyhow, and so got to hear that stupid "Hot Like Me" song, which the Mongolian nightclubs apparently love, for the hundreth time that trip. The club was in what looked like could've been a big observatory dome, except that the floor was ringed by blacklit booths and instead of a telescope there were poles and more strobe lights. The entertainment, besides the bad dance music, was a guy with a shock of dyed blond hair who, if I understood this right, was the winner of "Mongolian Idol" or whatever the equivalent is — though he most just MC'ed rather than any singing. I passed on the dancing and the drinking and sat and squinted some more. I also talked a bit with our driver Bataar, and Baynaa. Baynaa told me he thought I would be a good manager some day. I'm pretty sure he meant that as a compliment so I'll take it as such. This club, like the other one, finally shut down at midnight, at which point we all staggered back to the hotel, where I finished packing, washed some socks in the sink, and finally got to bed at about one in the morning.

The next morning we woke up early, hauled our bags downstairs, and had our last breakfast at the Urtuuchin Hotel. I initially thought we would have to check out entirely, but it turned out we were going to come back for lunch before leaving for UB again, so we piled all of our bags in one room and settled the minibar bills. As we loaded into the van at around nine another dusty pall was hanging in the air — the wind had picked up, strong, and tan clouds obscured much of Darkhan as we drove out to the homes we had helped build for the last time.

Our first visit was at Chotto's house, where we piled out into the dust storm. We were quickly invited into the family ger, where we saw that we weren't the only visitor — a stocky older man with a big moustache, brilliant orange tunic, and classic Mongolian hat was perched on a stool at the seat of honor opposite the low entryway. He was, it turned out, Chotto's elder brother, visiting from Ulaan Bataar. He was also, incidentally, a bo — a Mongolian shaman. We sat and visited with him for a long time, as he talked with us, asking us about our experiences and thanking us as his brother looked on shyly. Some of our talk was appropriately cryptic as well, such as his personal message to me that "you should ride a camel". At one point he produced a marmot-skin bag, from which he offered us each a handful of blessed rice, which we were told to scatter at a shrine on our travels to bring good fortune, a nice gift to be sure. I have to say having tea with a shaman was a first, and meeting this fellow an experience to remember; definitely not the kind of thing we would've been able to see without the connections we made through our work with the Habitat families. Finally we had to say our thanks and depart for the other home, as it was approaching eleven by that point.

Our stop at Ghana's house was somewhat briefer, which was sort of too bad since I had spent most of my time with the crew over there. But the hospitality was equally warm; we took shelter from the dust inside their home, which had just been installed with a door and windows. Inside, Ghana, who is a chef, presented us all a "Thank You" cake, and we celebrated with frosting-covered slices, and a bottle of vodka which we mercifully decided to save until some other time. Far too soon time was up and we had to say our goodbyes; then it was back to the hotel to pay our bills, grab our bags, and have lunch with the Darkhan affiliate staff. With many thanks, we finally said our last goodbyes to our hosts and packed ourselves into the van next to all our bags, heading towards UB and our R&R.



We arrived there four hours later at the offices of our tour guides, where we met our new driver, an older fellow named Bagi, and translator and guide, a friendly middle-aged woman named Ogi. We passed our bags into the large green Korean tour bus and said our goodbyes to Baynaa and our awesome driver Bataar; they were heading back to Darkhan. We, meanwhile, were heading west to the "Little Gobi" region (not the Gobi desert proper, which is further south and which we would've had to go to by plane), for camping, horseback riding, and other sights.

I notice that I haven't said much about the Mongolian road system yet, which is definitely worth a mention now. In a word, it is bad. It is also, rather frequently, nonexistent. This is not necessarily unexpected in a country with the lowest population density in the world, but still, it made for some rough travel. Infrastructure is something those of us lucky to enjoy it should all seriously appreciate; distances that on paved US highways would've taken perhaps two hours, tops, instead took five or six. The road we travelled on westward from Ulaan Bataar is Mongolian's longest, I believe, and at regular points we swerved off the cracked and potholed surface to follow dirt tracks running parallel — which were there, we soon saw, on account that in several places unfinished drainage ditches split the road surface entirely, forcing you to go off and around. Some day Mongolian road crews may come along and finish those, but I'm pretty sure we spent more time off the road than on; although the tour bus was roomier than the trusty van we came down from Darkhan in, it did not have a lot going for it in the shock absorber department, and our hiking bags would go flying up from the back on regular intervals as we hit a particularly deep bump. Again: it doesn't take an SUV to go offroad. But, there are some times when it might be nice.

As for rest stops, forget it — it was the great outdoors for us when nature called. We made a few brief stops but mostly continued pushing on until late in the night, snacking on bread and dried fruit and watching the steppes roll by. Eventually it got dark, and cold, and we huddled up in the seats in an attempt to catch some sleep; it was after eleven when we finally pulled off onto a long dirt road that finally led us (after a few wheel-spinning stops in the sand) to our ger camp. After unloading we split up into our gers, which were warm and cozy thanks to the fires roaring in the central stoves; we skipped dinner and I fell straight asleep after making the rounds to distribute water bottles to everyone. It was a pretty exhausting day.



The next morning I woke up to the cold — the fire had eventually gone out during the night, and the temperature had plummeted from what we had been experiencing in Darkhan. We were told to expect crazy weather in the Mongolian spring, and we ended up experiencing more or less everything during the two weeks there — dust storms, dry heat, brief rain, shivering cold. It actually stayed cold for the entirety of our R&R period, so it's a good thing I had warned everyone to prepare for it beforehand — up till that point, nobody had thought we were going to actually need our coats and long-sleeve layers, but we had a use for them in the end after all. We had breakfast at the ger camp's "restaurant tent" and met a fellow from Denmark travelling with his father; they had come all this way by rail, amazingly enough, and were continuing on to Lhasa, with the goal of taking the new Himalayan train line recently completed by the Chinese. After chatting with them for a while and warming up on hot tea, we headed out to the windy edge of our camp, where a line of horses were hitched up to two posts. It was horseback riding time!

Ms. Riddarfjarden, with whom I went horseback riding for the very first time ever in New Zealand this past January, was very clear about what I should say when it came time to saddle up, to the point where we practiced several times beforehand: "What are you going to say when they ask you if you've ridden before?" "No, this is my first time." Having gone riding enough times herself to be wary of letting on any experience, for fear of being saddled with an ornery steed, she was adamant that I was not to end up bucking around on any half-tamed beasts. In which I was in full agreement. When it came time to saddle up, however, nobody bothered to ask me anything, and I barely had time to ask "is this a nice horse?" before they had me mount up on a ginger steed with a buzz-cut mane. "Yes", they assured me, he was. Ok, well, we'll see.



Mongolian horses are shorter and stockier than the retired racehorses we rode in New Zealand, which helped mitigate most of the feelings of being perched precariously high above the ground on a semi-intelligent creature that I had felt then (mostly during the times when we went cantering along the rocky riverbeds). They are also, we were warned, shy — don't make loud noises, don't use flash photography, we were warned, unless you want to go flying over the horizon. Duly noted, we assured them. "If your horse takes off, just don't fall off, we'll catch up to you eventually", I half-jokingly told everyone, not wanting to think about what we would do if we had a medical emergency out here in what appeared to be literally the middle of nowhere (the handful of gers where we had spent the night aside), a long and bumpy six hours' drive away from UB. Loaded up with my camera, backpack full of Fearless Leader emergency supplies, and bundled up in jacket, pants, and bandanna, I can't say I quite matched our Mongolian cowboy guides for style, but it was still pretty cool riding out onto the flat open plain around our camp. Four or five of them rode along with the ten of us, teaching us a bit of horsemanship along the way — "giddyup", for the record, is "chu" in Mongolian.



We loped our way across the plain for a while, easing into the saddle. Our horses had just been roped in from a larger herd that was roaming around the plains next to the camp; not wild, I guess, but there were too many of them to have individual names. Mine was handling all right thus far; as one of the last to saddle up, I was towards the rear of the pack. We came to a small stream and began to cross; most of the rest of them were already on the other side when mine stopped for a leisurely drink. I let him go at for a bit, but not wanting to get left behind, I tugged on the reins after a bit and urged him up the bank, muttering "chu!" to him and leaning forward as I tried to catch up. And, well, "chu" he did — off we bolted.

I am told by those who saw the whole thing that it apparently looked like I knew what I was doing. Back straight, head high, reins in hand, whoosh, there I go. Which is good to know. In fact, I was mostly just busy trying not to fall off. My horse sped past the main group, onwards and, it became swiftly apparent, upwards, as he started to head up a hill up ahead. "Pull on the reins!" people shouted after me. "Easier said then done when you're bouncing along at full gallop with a backpack full of first aid kit and a camera bag slung around your side!" I did not respond back, since, as I said, I was too busy following my own advice, keeping both hands gripped firmly on the saddle pommel and working on priority number one, Not Falling Off. "That hill is rocky", I thought to myself. "So what?" my horse thought to itself, and kept going. "There goes another one," our cowboy guides thought to themselves, and one took off to rescue me. Fortunately, however, the hill started to work in my favor as the horse had to slow down enough to the point where I could risk letting going with one hand and hauling back on the reins. He slowed some more, which was good because at about this point one of my feet bounced out of the stirrups. Finally — and when I say finally, I mean, "after possibly a minute or two at most from the start of this all" — he stopped. The young cowboy who had taken off after me pulled up and jumped off, steadying us.

So, uh, yeah, I spent the rest of the morning tied to his horse.

But it was cool. The jarring ride notwithstanding, I think I am starting to develop a taste for horseback riding. My new guide friend even let our horses sprint some towards the end of it — mine appeared to be the most excitable of the bunch, as most of the rest were content with strolling along at a reasonable pace (once actually just up and sat down at one point). I think if we had had more time, we might have gone further into a stretch of desert visible at the edge of the plain, but as it was we were out there for over an hour and I would've been happy to spend an hour more. Except when I got off I found myself bow-legged as hell and intensely sore... but still that was ok. After dismounting, saying our goodbyes to our guides, and wobbling our way back to camp, we had lunch in the ger restaurant and packed up to hit the road, or at least what road we could find.

There's still a good bit left to tell so I'll have to stop here and conclude with part four when I can find the time.