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.

Once Upon A Time in the Steppes - Part Two

Read Part One // Read Part Three // Read Part Four

I woke up Monday morning dry, my throat parched until I chugged the remaining half-liter of water I had left standing next to my bedside. This was to be the norm for our two weeks in Mongolia — the high elevation (about 600 meters, or 2000 feet, average where we were; the national mean is about 1500 meters / 5000 feet) and cloudless skies meant essentially zero humidity and throats sucked dry overnight. Pretty much the exact opposite of Bangladesh, where we were wading through the air last year, but I did eventually get somewhat used to it, albeit only after first coming down with some sort of throat cold on the second or third day of the trip that lasted through the first week. In any case, that first day I rolled out early — 6:45ish — on account of an open window curtain and spent the morning mentally pacing before sitting down to the hotel breakfast at around 8:00, which was sausages and vegetable soup. It was good, and we were able to load up into the vans reasonably close to on time afterwards, leaving for the work site around 9:00. When the vans arrived we met Ogi, a young woman who would be our translator on-site; she was a former student of Baynaa's, she explained, although she didn't look like she could've been more than two or three years younger than him (apparently Baynaa taught English for a time at the local college before working with Habitat). We travelled to the first worksite, where we got a safety orientation from the construction supervisor, Ghana (#1), and met the homeowner, who was also Ghana (#2). Then we went to the second site and met a third Ghana (#3), who was another construction supervisor, and the homeowner on the second site, who we called Chotto even though I'm fairly sure that's not how we were supposed to be pronouncing his name. Both sites were about a ten minute drive apart from one another, on the southeast edge of town in a rundown district of shacks and gers. Chotto's house was near what had once been Russian military base, which was completely torn down to rubble after they left in 1992; he was tall with very Slavic-inclined features, in contrast to Ghana #2, whose wide face and ponytail made him look like he could've easily been one of the Khaan's riding buddies, if it weren't for the camouflage work pants.



At this point we were waiting for a load of sand to arrive from the nearby factory, so before starting work we took a short trip around to a nearby Habitat "neighborhood" where we could see what the finished houses would look like. We visited one, which belonged to a former construction supervisor; it was pretty cozy inside, I have to say. We returned from that to the first worksite and set about hauling concrete blocks out around the edge of the foundation, shoveling sand and clearing rocks. At around 10:30 I got called away with Baynaa to make a run to the grocery store for tea break snacks. The store, Darkhan's largest supermaket, was seriously better stocked than the place I shop at here in Japan... I would make this same trip every morning thereafter and get to enjoy the giant bust of Lenin looking over me from the wall as I checked out with my bag full of Korean snack cookies and Russian biscuits. Afterwards we swung by the hotel to order lunch (unprepared for this, I had to guess at random the first time) and then stopped by the Habitat offices, where I got to watch Baynaa argue with an elderly guy about something related to mortgage payments (Habitat homes aren't free; homeowners contribute the initially third of the money from their savings, with the remaining two-thirds being paid by donations and the local affiliate; the mortgage payments after the receive the house, which continue for about five years, help go towards the financing of more homes). At least I think they were arguing — Mongolian is a pretty guttural language and it can sound pretty harsh when you have no idea what they're saying (which, in my case, was more or less all the time). We returned for tea as the sand arrived, and after a short break we started mixing the cement for the walls.

I've done a lot of different unskilled construction tasks in my seven years with Habitat but masonry was a first this time, so that was fun; the local workers got us started at the corners and then more or less let us go to it ourselves, slapping down a trowel full of cement and dropping the blocks into place. What was not fun (well, it was kind of fun, but definitely not easy) was mixing the cement in the old bathtub by hand, which I didn't do that at that point but did several more times before the trip was over. It is seriously heavy stuff, and a great way to throw out your back if you're not careful; of course, the Mongolian guys churned through it like butter, but I've learned not to try and compete with the local talent. Everybody pitched in and we had a good time, but after lunch break I think we were all feeling the burn. In the afternoon we split into two teams to start working on the second site as well, which we would continue to do every day afterwards. In the past I have seen people get very attached to the house they're working on in these situations, and I wanted to avoid cliquishness, so I did my best to rotate people around and give them a chance to work with everyone on both houses; for the most part, I think this was a success. By 5:00 a full day of carrying concrete blocks and mixing cement was definitely catching up to out-of-shape us, and we went back to the hotel to call it a day. After an embarrassing miscommunication on my part at first, we went down to dinner at 6:00 with the HFH Darkhan office staff, who had all come to welcome us. Afterwards I relaxed with some card playing and then called it a night around 11:00.

The next day was more blocklaying in the morning, up to the final tenth row — two days and we had finished the walls, which was pretty amazing to see. We continued after lunch by filling the cracks in the blocks with cement, which was fun and comparatively easy work. On the way back in the evening we stopped at the supermarket for more shopping, and ran into a WorldVision puppet show taking place outside — there seems to be a fair amount of NGO activity going on there, as we were sharing the hotel with a pair of older dentists (one from Wisconsin, the other Mississippi) who were also in town for two weeks pulling teeth. In the evening some people went to the nearby internet cafe, others watched tv — we actually had an amazing array of international channels, with the BBC news, HBO movies, National Geographic documentaries, and weird Russian MTV music videos all on regular display. (I did see one cool hip-hop video though, so if there happen to be any Russian readers out there who know the song by the guy wearing the 1920s newsie-style cap rapping with his two bandmates and then taking up the guitars to rock out, all the while interspersed with Soviet historical stock footage, please let me know what the song's called in comments here.) In a way this was kind of unfortunate, as it tended to cause people to lounge around in their rooms rather than visiting with each other, but down time is important when you're stuck travelling together with a group 24/7 and I wasn't about to push it.

Our third day we continued sealing cracks inside and out along the walls and also began mixing a special kind of cement — this one with rocks in it! — that we laid as a cap around the walltops and also as a slab on the floor where the stove would sit. We had a good morning of work and then after lunch went to visit an elementary school in Old Darkhan. The school was one of Darkhan's smaller but we got a chance to visit one class, which was (if I understood this right) a group of second-graders. The kids were, of course, adorable — after we played a few games and sang some English songs with them, they sang back to us in Mongolian, breathlessly recited some poems, and of course asked us loads of questions. Besides the free English class we brought donations of school supplies from our students back in Japan, who loaded us down with all the cute Engrish notebooks we could carry. After about an hour of visiting we said our goodbyes and returned for a little bit of work on the houses, nailing together some beams that would become part of the ceiling. We ordered dinner at the appropriately named "Nice Cafe" — by this point everyone was ready for a break from the hotel menu, which we were eating from breakfast, lunch, and dinner — afterwards and had dinner with Baynaa and our drivers there.

Thursday we began plastering the exterior walls with a seal of two inches or so worth of cement; slap a trowel full of cement onto a flat board, smack it against the wall, and sort of shimmy it upwards in an attempt to keep it from all falling off again in a clump before sanding it smooth with a wide circular motion of the board. This took a while for us all to get the hang of, and we had to do a few walls a second time the next day; by lunch time I was pretty exhausted. There was to be no rest for the weary, though, as after lunch I and every other guy working with Habitat Darkhan got called away for some seriously heavy lifting. Together, the fifteen or so of us managed to haul off a (rough guess) one-ton water tank and a two-ton shed, using nothing more than some scaffolding, wooden poles, and brute force: it was a pretty amazing process to watch as everybody threw in their opinion on the best way to heave these things into the back of the aging Russian dump truck that had come to transport them to a new area where HFH Darkhan would be building another neighborhood of Habitat houses. When I finally left some two hours later, the shed was hanging off the back of the truck suspending by a single metal cable.. but they're pretty resourceful guys there in Darkhan, and apparently they did finally manage to get it to their destination, somehow.

Friday morning we had something of a minor catastrophe involving laundry service at the hotel — clothes went missing initially and then after three days the bill turned out to be something on the order of twenty-five dollars for a load (the charge was per item, not per load; apparently laundry is a fair luxury in Mongolia, as we later found there were no public laundromats anywhere), which was not what we had expected, to put it mildly. People were, not surprisingly, not happy by this, but then it looked like maybe the poor bellboy who had taken the clothes might be the one who would have to pay when people refused. The whole thing was an awful miscommunication from the start and definitely not good times, but I think in the end we did manage to come to some sort of solution where we were not going to be taking six months of this poor boy's salary on account of the fact that we didn't get our clothes back on time. After that we washed our clothes in the sink. Again, not a pleasant situation, and one I was glad to be done with. We continued plastering through Friday afternoon; on the first house they were already working on roof frames, but the second site went a little slower. In the afternoon, we made a visit to a poor area of Old Darkhan, to see the kinds of shacks many Mongolians have to live in, which was hopefully an eye-opener for all of us.



Saturday morning we said goodbye to two of our team members, as both P. and Ms. Riddarfjarden were unable to stay for the full two weeks and had to catch a flight back to Japan that evening. They drove back to Ulaan Bator after a visit to the work sites in the morning to say goodbye; checking out was a little rushed and I didn't think to give them money from the group fund to help pay for their meals and such in UB, but otherwise they got there and back home fine. After they left we continued with yet more spackling; by this point in the week we were all dragging, and we were a hot and dirty bunch at lunch time. We broke early at around four and had dinner at the Nice Cafe again. That evening was the social highlight of the week — yes, that's right, we went to the disco in Mongolia. Some of the more enthusiastic team members ended up inviting just about everyone — homeowners, Habitat families, hotel workers — so it ended up being quite a crowd that rolled into Club Scorpion that night. I could say that I had a great time dancing and partying it up with the Darkhan folks... but the truth is I hate dancing and I spent most of the night sitting in a corner squinting into the glare of what seemed to be about a thousand blinding strobe lights while bad techno boomed around us. Everyone else did seem to have a good time though, so I sucked it up. It certainly was an experience, although not necessarily one I was keen to repeat.

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This is running long so I'll save the aforementioned stuck-in-a-river-in-the-middle-of-nowhere story for Part Three, in which I also hope to finish recounting our second week of work, our three days of R&R bouncing around in a bus all over Mongolia, and my experience on horseback.

Once Upon A Time in the Steppes - Part One

Read Part Two // Read Part Three // Read Part Four

It has been two years since I organized and led a Habitat for Humanity volunteer trip. What was once regular practice — one of the dominant themes of my college social life, actually — has been relegated to anecdotes and memories during my two years expatriation in Japan. Last year's trip to Bangladesh offered a brief building fix, but then as participant rather than leader; it was enjoyable in its way, but also not what I had been used to. I doubt anyone would've predicted it during my quiet high schooler days, but three years in a position of responsibility with the Boston University Habitat organization definitely has changed me — for all the stress involved, I'd still rather be Fearlessly Leading. The unpredicted complications in the run-up to our departure were many, but "then I spent two hours wading through the Japanese post office bureaucracy" or "the correspondent bank in New York didn't have enough account information to forward our $2000 of tour money to the bank in Mongolia" doesn't make for a very thrilling travel narrative... so I'm going to begin at our date of departure and simply note that, for me anyhow, the adventure had already begun a good while back. I had booked (and re-booked) tickets, sent long exhaustive e-mails, collected donations, corresponded with our hosts, fought with my Board of Education, and chipped in about $5000 of my own money in the hope that I would eventually get it back (I did, eventually). Now it was time to actually make it happen.

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We left from Fukuoka International Airport on the evening of Friday the 27th; we had originally planned to leave on a flight the following Saturday morning, but that waitlist never budged. Golden Week, four national holidays in the span of seven days, is probably the busiest travel season in Japan outside of maybe New Year's, and apparently a lot of people were heading to Seoul to stock up on kimchi and Yon-sama t-shirts. Luckily for the eleven of us, we were able to get onto a flight late enough in the evening that no-one would have to take off work Friday in order to make it to the airport. I caught the bus with Ms. Riddarfjarden and Erin and got to Fukuoka around 6:30; everyone else was there ready to go, so I handed out passports and tickets and we checked our bags through to Ulan Bator. The airport was pretty empty that evening so I had figured we would have no problem; but after delays changing money, having to repack a bag with all of our liquids, and there being only one grumpy guy at the emigration counter, the plane was starting to board by the time we finally got through, hot and tired. We were able to relax on the quick plane ride over, though, and got into Seoul around 10:30 in the evening. I had booked rooms at the Incheon Guesthouse, and although our initial attempt to call and have them come pick us up failed — nobody spoke English on the other end — we did get help from the airport information services. Two vans showed up not long after, whose drivers did speak English, and they whisked us away to the guesthouse, which like the one I stayed in on my trip to Busan in February, was located in a large apartment tower complex. Even so, it was pretty nice, with a kitchenette and everything — probably meant for longterm stay, I guess.

Our flight on to Ulan Bator Saturday wasn't until the evening as well so we had almost a full day to kill in Seoul; we slept in and lounged around until around 11:00ish at which point we dragged ourselves down to check out and see the city. The guesthouse drivers took us back to the airport, where we all checked buses and took one in to Anguk in Seoul, about an hour and a half away — with the plan being that some people would split up but that we would all be meeting back at the airport no later than 6:00 PM. One person split off in Anguk to meet a friend and the rest of us had a delicious Korean-style lunch; Korean food continues to be one of my favorites, especially for eating in groups. After that about half of us split for walk the Insadong street arcade and window shop at art stores, and the other half (with me included) headed to Gyeongbokgung Palace. It's Seoul's largest and grandest, until the Japanese got to it — twice, once in 1592 and then again in the 1890s. The city has crept up around it but it's currently being restored and several of the buildings are still quite impressive; also cool were the "royal guards" stationed at the gates, whose costumes visitors were able to try on. I didn't have time to see the War Memorial Museum (I was apparently the only one who wanted to go) so I'm going to have to come back to Seoul some day and check that out (and go on a DMZ tour).

The two groups met back at around 4 and we caught the bus back to the airport — although the ride was pretty jarring ("he's driving this bus like a taxi" was how Ms. Riddarfjarden described it) we did get there exactly on time, at 6:00. Unfortunately, we then proceeded to have a small panic over the fact that J., who had gone off to meet her friend, was not back yet. After several pages over the airport PA system I finally told the others to head up and start checking in, but not to leave without me and J. — I don't know what would've happened if she hadn't made it back in time, but I was not about to leave anyone behind, so it probably wouldn't have been anything good. She did finally make it there by 7:00, having missed the bus and taken an $80 cab in order to get there about 45 minutes before our plane was to depart. We got through security fast, I dashed into an electronics store to buy a universal plug adaptor, and then onto the plane we went! This was probably the most stressful moment of the trip, and it did introduce a bit of tension in the group, but ultimately luck was with us.



The flight was almost empty so I attempted to nap a little bit, but no luck; we arrived into Ulan Bator at around midnight on Saturday after a three and a half hour flight. Our first taste of Mongolia was pretty bland; the immigration hall was small and the process slow (not helped by the fact that ours closed right as we got to the front). When we did get through our bags were waiting for us, and outside so was Batbold and the rest of the Habitat team, with the van and car that would be our team's transportation for the week and a half we would spend building with the Darkhan Habitat for Humanity affiliate.

Batbold greeted us with a friendly smile and an accent that (like most Mongolians) was very Russian-sounding to my ears; he mentioned that English has only been a popular language of study since 1992, when Mongolia gave up Soviet-style socialism. We piled into the cars and strapped our bags to the roof to head off into night for our hotel in central Ulan Bator; I sat up front wedged between Batbold and the driver and we chatted through the drive. I attempted to learn a bit of Mongolia and learned that "thank you" is very hard to say (what we eventually learned sounded something like "bar-shlah", and whether that was even close I'm still not sure — a lot of tricky gutturals and blends in Mongolian). I also learned that, incidentally, tomorrow was apparently the first ever emissions-reduction day in Ulan Bator (on account of the bad smog) and maybe we wouldn't be able to drive anywhere? But we'd figure out something. (Last year in Dhaka, oddly enough, there was a similar sort of case, except that in that case it was striking opposition parties blocking the streets.) We did get to our hotel, the Amure, at around midnight, and collapsed into several rooms.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel (sausages and some sort pancake blobs which were better than that sounds) and then an orientation session with Batbold and Baynaa the Darkhan Affiliate Development Officer (who would be our host and my counterpart in Darkhan) in the hotel. Batbold was funny and did a very good job explaining Habitat, its mission, and its programs in Mongolia, particularly for an audience like ours where most people had not worked with HFH before. More than one wit had remarked to us before we left that "you're going to build houses for nomads?", but the reality is that since the end of socialist control and the resumption of free internal migration within the country after a seventy-year freeze, urbanization has increased rapidly as the population seeks jobs in cities like Ulan Bator and Darkhan. Over half the population lives in the cities now, where unemployment can be as high as 40%, and limited building resources (materials are often imported from China), aging and overcrowded Soviet-era housing, and high loan rates make home ownership very challenging for a lot of Mongolian families. HFH Mongolia has been in operation since 2000, with three Affiliates (building new houses) and another five Program Centers (renovating older houses) throughout the country. To date they've built 575 new houses and renovated 110, with goals for 800 this year. Two of those, we would be helping complete, and our group's donations (over $6000 worth) would go towards the construction of several more.

After our orientation we hit the streets of UB — side streets, on account of the aforementioned traffic restrictions, but it didn't turn out to be too much of an inconvenience for us. Ulan Bator was looking very dusty and very post-Communist; lots of drab concrete and industrial decay, but also interspersed with new construction, SUVs on the streets, and some pedestrians in chic European fashion. Unlike poor Bangladesh, Mongolia appears to be a developing country that actually is developing, however unevenly, thanks to the influx of Western assistance post-1992 and the commodities industry boom. We joined the ranks of millionaires after converting all of our team money into tugrug notes (a little over 1000 to the dollar) and used that to go on a short shopping trip at a local grocery store where we stocked up on bottled water. From there we made a side stop at our tour guides' offices to pay for the R&R portion of our trip, which we would be taking for our last three days in-country, and then crammed ourselves into a very tight van for the three and a half hour drive to Darkhan.

Although the legroom situation didn't get much better, the scenery did — we gradually left behind the dusty pall of UB and came out under the huge blue sky Mongolia is famous for. I've never seen a landscape quite like it before — huge expansive plains and hills stretching out from the potholed highway, dotted every now and then by a ger camp or a herd of cows, horses, or goats. Baynaa later said that, in summer, it all turns lush and green, but with spring only just beginning in Mongolia (we saw a few small patches of snow) the grasses were mostly tan and sparse. We stopped at a highway diner and after discovering the joys of open-pit toilets enjoyed a hearty meal of lamb burger and rice with ketchup... and got to check out the Mongolian high police outfit as well on some of our fellow diners, which is very Red Army-esque: military-style cap, white T-shirt with field jacket, black combat boots. I paid for lunch from the biggest bag of money the little boy next to the register had ever seen, and then we hit the road again.

We arrived in Darkhan at around 4:00 and checked into the Urtuuchin Hotel, which would be our home for the next week and a half. As I was one of only two guys on the trip (story of my Habitat career, to be honest) there wasn't much doubt as to who my roomate would be; the rest of us paired off and stowed our bags, then went down to the hotel restaurant to place orders for our dinner that evening before heading out for a tour of the city with Baynaa and "Bob", a member of the Darkhan HFH board, English translator, and teach at the local 800-student Darkhan College, which I gathered is a hospitality university. In the course of placing our orders, we met a Korean couple (the husband of which I believe was there on a mining contract?) who were either a little crazy or a little drunk or possibly both; in any case after we explained what we, a group of 11 young foreigners, happened to be doing here in Darkhan, they insisted on giving us one of every tugrug note (T10 on up through T20,000). The orientation that morning had mentioned our giving gifts to the locals — generally, it's preferred that we do it through the Habitat organization, so as to reduce dependency and potential pressure on future GV teams — but nobody told us what to do if someone was trying to give a gift to us. We eventually established that they didn't want to give us this money (it was worth at least about $35) as a donation but rather a "souvenir" to remember Mongolia by. After several protestations that Darkhan HFH could use this money much more than us — which were emphatically brushed aside — I finally caved in and took the money, which I promptly offered to Baynaa as soon as we got outside. After going back in to talk to the couple some more, he returned and said "this is your problem", which was worth a laugh at that point. So we took the money.

After this little episode we got in the van and car (which were a lot roomier now without the luggage) and took a short tour of the city, visiting a hill topped with a Buddhist stupa monument that overlooked both the old and new sections of town; another hill across the road featured a statue of a rider playing the horse fiddle. Darkhan has only existed since the 1960s, when it was planned and built by the Russians as an industrial town — the name means "blacksmith" in Mongolian. Today the population is around 100,000, and most of the Russians have gone home; a lot of industry has closed down but there is still some left (they pointed out a thermal power plant, sheepskin factory, and a few machine factories on our tour). We went back to the hotel and visited an internet cafe before dinner, which was good. Exhausted, I headed to bed soon after that, and so ended our first full day in Mongolia.

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In the next part, I'll talk about our first week of work; our visit to an elementary school; and getting stuck in a river in the middle of nowhere. Excitement abounds!

Big Sky

This place has gone dormant on account of I don't really have time to keep up with blogs at the moment. My contract with JET will be ending this July and although I've got a good idea of the places I plan on traveling through on my round-the-world return, I do not as of yet have any job for when I get back to the States. I'm dividing most of my time between the wonderful Ms. Riddarfjarden and Habitat for Humanity; this May I will be leading a team of eleven volunteers to build homes under the big sky of Darkhan, Mongolia. There will be plenty of pictures and maybe a travelogue or two when I get back but for now you can see the details — and donate to the cause, if you're so inclined — here.

All for now.

"The reward... may be.. SURVIVAL!"

I'm not ashamed to admit that one of my most prized possessions is a circa 1962 U.S. Civil Defense fallout shelter water storage barrel, which I inherited from the Boston University Physical Plant (where it was sitting around unused in the paint shop) during my time working as a carpenter's lackey there; there were apparently tons of them left in the old National Guard Armory Building on campus prior to its demolition and subsequent replacement by the shiny new Student Village housing complex, and while most of them were junked I managed to pick up this one. It makes a great end table with a piece of plywood on top, but is unfortunately not too suitable to shipping overseas to my current home of Japan.

In lieu of that, I will have to feed my fascination with Cold War ephemera via this wonderful collection classic U.S. Civil Defense filmstrips (and also general Cold War-era reels), found at the Internet Archive thanks to a tip at Lawyers, Guns, and Money (the "House in the Middle" spot highlighted in that post truly has to be seen to be believed). Watching this stuff, I think it's not too hard to see why we got the 60's.

Adventures in Middle Earth, Part Two: South Island and Back Again

Part One is here.

So; having crossed over to the South Island on the day after Christmas, we had at that point eight full days left in the country, the last of which we had to finish up in Auckland by 4:00 in order to return our car and prepare for our early flight out on the morning of the 3rd. Aside from our first days in Auckland, we had yet to stay in the same place two nights in a row, and despite a good time in Waitomo were still feeling like we were spreading ourselves too thin; the prospect of more or less everything had been closed from Christmas Eve through Boxing Day also contributed to the thought that our remaining time here in Middle Earth was, shall we say... precious.

With this in mind during the course of our ferry ride across the Cook Strait we decided to plant ourselves down in a good-looking place for at least two days in order to take part in some more of the many adventure tourist activities New Zealand has to offer. A promising candidate appeared in the form of Kaikoura, a small little crayfishing town on a peninsula jutting out from the northeast coast of the South Island that has turned itself into a center for whale-watching, fur seal-watching, dolphin swimming, and other aquatic activities. Only a short drive from Picton later we were there, and looking around found ourselves a very comfortable backpacker's hostel, The Albatross, which at one point served as the town's Post Office and telephone exchange (the huge post office safe vault door is still there in the common lounge). The friendly proprietor set us up in the special "Turkish-style" dorms — again, all to ourselves! —where curtains shelter each bunk. We stayed in a number of nice places during our travels through Enzedd but this was definitely one of the nicest, hence the direct recommendation (for what it's worth) here. Also, the Subway sandwich man there in Kaikoura is extremely friendly as well.

Well, dolphin swimming turned out to be booked out for the next week, but as the Lonely Planet did warn us of that we weren't too set back by it. Instead we decided to go horseback riding, another first for me, but not for Ms. Riddarfjarden who was looking forward to the chance to go riding again. Accompanied by our guide Linda and a very energetic dog named Zack, our two mounts, Madam and Winston ("Winnie") took us along a path in the shadow of Mount Fyffe, over some rocky riverbeds and around several acres of land. The horses were well-behaved, which was good, because I mostly concentrated on staying upright (especially when we tried some bone-jarring trotting; now I know why cowboys were always so ornery, as sore as that left me). It's weird to be riding something that you don't need to guide precisely along, but rather is an intelligent animal that knows where to go and how to watch its footing on its own. A neat experience, and something I'd be interested in trying again I think.

We returned to town and took a long (and hot) walk along the rocky peninsula tip on whose edges the seals regularly bask; then it was back to the Albatross for a refreshing shower (and much-needed laundry run) and a late dinner at a local seafood restaurant that also, it must be said, did a delicious rack of lamb. The live cover band playing made a few questionable selections but all in all it was a nice finish to the day.

With dolphin swimming booked out we decided we might as well bid our farewells to Kaikoura and carry on; having already made reservations in Christchurch for New Year's Eve, we resolved to cross over to the other side of the island, before doubling back again for our reserved night there. A four-hour or so drive through Lewis Pass took us over the spine of the South Island and to the West Coast, where we made a short drive northward to the Punakaiki "pancake rocks", surf-pounded stacks of limestone that jut out into the Tasman Sea. Heading back south, we stopped in Hokitika, a major jade-working town that was unfortunately almost entirely closed for the holidays. We did chat with a few fellow backpackers in our hostel whose car problems were even worse than ours (a hare had apparently jumped into, and subsequently shattered, their windshield, temporarily stranding them there) and who had enough stories about Australian spiders to make me reconsider just how badly I want to see Coober Pedy anytime soon (well, I still do.. maybe in winter, though).

There was a nice little "grotto" of glowworms on the edge of town that night, far fewer than in the caves of Waitomo but still very beautiful (when the other noisy tourists left it, that is). We also spotted a possum, "New Zealand's number one enemy!", hiding there in the dark. We saw nocturnal critters of a different type the next morning when we visited a local zoo (things are open, finally!) and saw a couple of... cute, whuffling little kiwis! Any comparisons made to fluffy footballs just begging to be kicked will be omitted from this public recounting for the sake of decorum. But they were cute.

So the main reason we had come to this side of the island was not the chance to see kiwis, but rather — glaciers. Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers lay just a little further south of us, only about a half hour apart from each other, and I was keen to go hiking as we could — helicopter tours and serious mountain climbing expeditions are all available there but I figured a day to take in the walking trails that skirt the terminus at each would be plenty. Unfortunately, by the time we reached Franz, it was raining steadily with no signs of let-up, forcing us to take stock of our plans and consider whether we wanted to stick around and wait out the rain.

The forecast we got from two German girls who attempted to proposition us for a lift — "anywhere but here" —was not encouraging; it had been like this for several days and many of the tracks and trails were closed from the rain. In a testament either to their hitchhiking skills or our extreme decent-ness, we told them we would have to think what our next move was going to be but if we were going to leave, we would stop by their hostel and offer them a ride our way. It continued to rain through lunch and we finally settled on taking a short walk up to Sentinel Rock overlooking the tip of Franz Josef glacier. It lightened a little during this part and we were able to make out a bit of the glacier; soaked but having at least seen something, we decided to cut our losses and head back to Christchurch early, bump up our reservation there by one and use the extra day elsewhere. Fox would have to wait for another time. The German girls back in town thanked us but said they weren't planning on going as far as Christchurch; that and a delay for filling up the gas tank meant that just as we were leaving Franz Josef town... the sun broke out!

45 seconds or so of deliberation and we swiftly resolved to wheel around and head for Fox as fast as we could, hoping to beat the next downpour. Hiking our way through light mists, we made our way up the scree-filled canyon that the glacier had gouged out over the past century, coming within only a few hundred meters of a massive wall of blue ice that was truly awesome to see. Someday I'll have to back and see it under clearer skies, but I'm very glad we were able to see what we did. Then it was back across the Southern Alps again, along the twisting slopes of Arthur's Pass, a long mountains drive but, it must be said, a beautiful one to make in dusk-light. We pulled into Christchurch late in the evening (after passing through another pounding rainstorm on the outskirts, that, unfortunately, would follow us for the next few days) but found our reservations welcome and waiting for us. No energy for dinner — straight to bed.



We had a nice big brunch in a downtown Christchurch cafe; still raining, and cold, we went to check out the Air Force Museum for a change of pace. We spent a good deal of time there, marveling at what a different experience it must've been to be a far-flung citizen in the service of the British Empire back in the first half of the 20th century — and discussing the crucial national defense issue of which is cooler, jets or helicopters. Opinions on our committee differed and final judgement was postponed pending further study. By the afternoon as we left it had cleared off — though still cold — so we were able to walk through downtown Christchurch, passing by the famous cathedral as well as some pleasant botanical gardens that seemed to be having some kind of UFO problem. For dinner we splurged on some Mexican, which sadly does not seem to be found for cheap anywhere outside of North America. It was good (and spicy) though.

The next day was New Year's Eve and we decided to press back up north, reaching Picton in a few hours and catching a ferry north back to Wellington. This experience was considerably livelier than our crossing south a few days back; four to five meter swells had the boat churning and rolling for most of the three hours, sending things rolling and flying all over in the cabin lounge and most of the passengers to the seasick bags in short order. I managed to keep my feet pretty well and shut down the panic impulse as best I could whenever I saw the ocean surface rolling out underneath the side porthole across the room; the ferry crew seemed fairly blase about the whole thing so I passed the time listening to their conversations and skimming the Lonely Planet for ideas to fill our as-yet-unplanned New Year's Day.

We finally made it into Wellington and yet more pouring rain. Driving around in search of a place to say it soon became apparent that our decision make reservations for the holiday had been a good idea — except that we had made them in Christchurch, and had bumped them up to the 30th, so now we were out of luck. We finally made it back to the hotel we had spent Christmas in and got the last room in the house, a spacious triple well worth the NZ$99. We had good Indian food for dinner but did not end up staying out to midnight with the rest of Wellington's population; which was too bad, but we were also pretty soaked and tired as well.

2007 dawned gray and rainy, but we had a goal — see Mount Doom! Tongariro National Park in the center of the North Island is home to Mount Ngauruhoe, which played the role of Mordor's fiery mountain in Lord of the Rings. We reached it by noon, and while it was still cool and misty (leaving comparisons to the screen version, not to mention clear photos, somewhat hard to make) we were able to get in a good hour or so of hiking along the rocky scrub desert that surrounds its flanks. Unfortunately no orcs in sight, but it was something.



We stopped in the small town of Turangi, ate Chinese takeout, and slept the night in a crowded dorm before alighting early the next morning for Auckland. There we spent our last day in country doing a bit of grocery shopping — my fennel needs have been unmet here in Japan thus far — and returning the car after securing a spot in a backpackers and a shuttle bus out to the airport at the crack of dawn the next morning in order to make our 9:00 AM flight. We saw Borat in theaters (since we figured it's doubtful it'll be making it here any time soon) which was admittedly funny albeit extremely cringe-inducing... which I guess is mostly the point. Then it was off to bed for the last time in New Zealand.

The flight on to Hong Kong was as long as the one down, but starting off in the morning when we were still awake helped make it more bearable; the reasonably good selection of movies (except Miami Vice, which was as awful as The Departed was good) helped too.

By the time we made it to HK we were pretty tired, though, and with a full 24 hours layover we needed a place to spend the night. We found one in Chungking Mansions, a "backpacker ghetto" whose unique character which the Lonely Planet alternated between praising and warning against. Unfortunately we were too busy dodging touts to catch any pictures of the place; the most immediate comparison I have was the building in downtown Dhaka we changed money in during my trip to Bangladesh last May, an urban experience like no other I've had to date; this is probably partly due to the fact that many of Chungking's tenants appeared to be immigrants from South Asia, including (judging from the writing on a number of the storefronts) Bangladesh itself. The bottom floor was given over to all manner of shops, mostly serving this immigrant community, while the above 16 floors were packed with all manner cheap flats, budget guest rooms, and flophouses. We wandered through for a bit, finally prying off the last and most persistent tout; picking a place more or less at random out of our guidebook, we went up to check out the Osaka Guesthouse, and when the young African man on duty — who didn't look to be more than a teenager — called in the manager, who should he be but our persistent fellow from downstairs. Well, the place wasn't bad and it certainly was cheap, so we took it, and proceeded to stretch out and nap.

Our failure to reset the clock for local time meant that nap lasted a good deal longer than we had intended, and we ended up stepping out near midnight onto the streets of Kowloon, Hong Kong, which made for an interesting visual tableau of the kind I imagine most people associate with my current home of Japan; very Blade-Runner, in parts, our Mansions most especially included. We didn't stay out too very late, stopping at a 7-11 for some snacks and doing a bit of window shopping in the closed Nathan Street storefronts.

The next day we took a tram line up a very steep ascent to the top of Victoria Peak, where thick haze brought south by prevailing winds from mainland China obscured what the guidebook assured us was probably a very impressive view of Hong Kong. We got lunch in a very crowded restaurant — we were seated at a table with other patrons, something that I had always been advised to prepare for in Japan but which to date has never happened to me here — and then made our way back to the airport for our 1:00 flight home. Another stopover in Taipei, touchdown in Fukuoka, and a pass through Japanese customs (Inspector: "Do you speak Japanese?" Me: "Uh, sukoshi." ["a little"] Inspector: "What's in this box?" Me: "Omiyage." Inspector: "No drugs?" Me: "No." Inspector: "Ok, thank you." *waves us through*). An hour on the train and then it's home sweet Karatsu, with the first day of the new semester waiting for me the next day.

It's hard to wrap something like this up with a neat conclusion but I think it's fair to say that New Zealand is one of the most beautiful places I've travelled to; and there is also far too much there to fit into a mere two weeks. If you can go, do, but be sure to take good care of it while you're there, because I plan to go back.



(But my next stop is... Mongolia.)

Adventures in Middle Earth, Part One: The North Island

So... New Zealand. You look at a map and say to yourself, "Why, it's just straight south of Japan here... when am I ever going to be this close again?" And while you might be right that traveling to the Land of the Long White Cloud from the United States would be a very long endeavor, the fact is it's not all that short of a trip from Japan, either. You are flying more or less half-way around the world ... it just happens to be the other, other half. Something to remember for the next time I leave the northern hemisphere.

There were no direct flights — at least no cheap ones — to Auckland from our end of Japan so we went through Hong Kong. We packed everything into my yellow hiking bag and took the train up to Fukuoka, where we just managed to make it out to the international terminal and through security and to our gate right as final boarding was being called. Part of the delay was due to the check-in lady spending a good 20 minutes trying to figure out a way to seat my traveling companion, the lovely and for the purposes of this blog post momentarily pseudonymous Ms. Riddarfjarden, and myself together, which she was ultimately unable to do for the first leg of our journey. Instead I ended up pinned against the window by two Japanese salarymen until we stopped off in Taipei, Taiwan for a short layover. There we got out to stretch our legs in a very dingy looking airport lounge before returning for the remaining two hours or so to Hong Kong; having arrived at HK's shiny new airport we had a good seven or eight hours to pass until our next flight on to Auckland.

We had some Chinese food, debated the merits of shelling out 40 bucks for a shower and nap cubicle (which we ultimately passed on), wandered all over the concourse, and reveled in airport bookstores that actually had things in languages we could read. (Thank you, a hundred years of British colonialism.) Finally we were let onboard our 11-hour redeye to Auckland, although the cabin crew's insistence on feeding us dinner — it already felt like past midnight for us, and was 9:00 Hong Kong time — kept us up a good while longer. Cathay Pacific gives you a toothbrush and toothpaste in a little complimentary toiletries set, which you would think is a nice touch until you actually taste the toothpaste, which is vile. Be forewarned.

We finally touched down in Auckland the next day and passed through New Zealand customs, which is probably the most serious I've experienced in my travels to date — they take their "100% Pure" slogan (and their agriculture industry) pretty seriously. They did not, however, bother to open our bags. After changing some money we caught a shuttle bus into the city center where our hostel lay, a bus driven by a slightly manic old lady. I think my only major instance during the trip of not being able to penetrate the Kiwi accent was when she asked for 30 dollars for our tickets.. I'd claim sleep deprivation but she also almost drove off while another guy was still getting out of the bus so maybe just crazy will suffice. Our host at the B&B, an Indian woman whose name I don't recall, was as friendly and welcoming as the bus lady was intimidating and weird so we were able to do a good bit better after that. Total travel time, from out our door to falling onto the bed in Auckland — probably about 26 to 27 hours.

Fortunately they made the place inaccessible for a reason: it's too gorgeous a country to let all the rest of us go mucking it up. I suppose I shouldn't lavish too many superlatives — I'm sure there are hidden problems and issues that my short two-week passage left me oblivious to, and the weather for one was not exactly pristine for the full duration of our trip (I was dubious of this whole "summer in December" claim to begin with... it was warm, but the season having only just started, we were still in jackets or at least long sleeves most of the time) — but I did feel like New Zealand had a number of the qualities (a diverse range of culture and ethnicity, raw natural beauty, housing insulation) that I miss living here in Japan.

We saw a bit of that in our first two days in Auckland; after a recovery nap we walked through the Ponsonby area and the "K Road", which took us through several neighborhoods that reminded me of the outskirts of Boston in my days there. We had some tasty Malaysian food for our first meal in the country and explored a bit of the central Queen Street downtown area before making our way back to our B&B for the first night. The next day we returned to Queen Street, walking down its sloping length to the ferry port at the north side of the city to take a ferry across to the slightly tonier suburb of Devonport on the far side of the harbor. It dumped down a bit of rain at this point and then cleared off again, which it would continue to do frequently during the course of our trip. At Lonely Planet's recommendation we did a walk of two old fortified volcanic hills, Mt. Victoria and North Head; failing to heed our B&B host's recommendation from the morning to be careful of the sun, I got burnt. The old tunnels were cool, though, as were the (still unexplained) mushroom-capped vents on top of Mt. Victoria.



We returned to our place to look at car rentals and arranged to rent one through the recommendation of our host; from what we could tell it would be the cheapest option available and she did seem pretty nice. The wisdom of this approach was put to a bit of questioning the next morning when we were picked up in the car we would be driving, a mid-90s Nissan Sunny that pretty clearly would not be charging up the Southern Alps any time soon. The price was right, though, so we went with it; it took us a while to find our way out of the city but we eventually made it onto a scenic highway lined with jungle flora right out of Jurassic Park, which lead out west towards Karekare Beach, where the movie The Piano (which I haven't seen, but Ms. Riddarfjarden had) was filmed. Gorgeous rock formations and dramatic surf.

After a stop there we carried on northward to Waipoua Forest, where huge kauri trees grow; we got there just an hour or so before dusk, it taking longer to wind our way over the Northland hills on a single-lane highway than we had initially planned (this would the story of much of the first part of our trip, until we had to admit that the country is a good deal bigger than we'd planned and started adjusting our plans accordingly). The forest was nearly empty of fellow hikers though, and some of the trees were massive — the most breathtaking being Te Matua Ngahere (Father of the Forest), its trunk over 5 meters in diameter. Amazing.



By the time we had left the forest it was nearing darkness (which meant it was going on 8:00ish) and we stopped, more or less by default, in the tiny town of Opononi, which featured a closed gas station, closed restaurant, closed takeaway fish-and-chips place, and one open youth hostel, the "House of Harmony". We were able to get a dorm all to ourselves, the only other folks there being a Swedish couple (named Rodriguez?) in one of the other rooms. Dinner-less, we munched down a few crackers and raisins and called it a night.

The next day we made a U-turn and headed back down south, past Auckland and into the central part of the North Island. Our destination was Rotorua, a thermal hot springs area full of steaming lakes, volcanic vents, and the occasional geyser. Again, unfortunately, the driving took longer than we had hoped and we ended up getting into the city in the early evening, by which point many of the lake walks we had hoped to see were already closed; one option still open, though, was Tikitere: Hell's Gate, the English name coming from a visiting George Bernard Shaw. It was gray and rainy but that might've helped contribute to the blighted atmosphere.. plenty of bubbling pools and sulfurous gasses and other cool features that spread out over several acres of land. You could only imagine what the early Maori would have made of such a place.. surrounded by forest, it certainly felt like an otherworldly place. The abrupt death of Ms. Riddarfjarden's camera further contributed to a sense of forlorn-ness, but that might've just been the rain.

After getting dinner, it was going on 9:00, and we made it to the Kiwi Paka Youth Hostel just in time to have them switch off the reception room lights in our face. Turning around quickly, we snagged another dorm bedroom to ourselves in the Planet Nomad backpackers about ten minutes before it too would've closed the doors, luck that carried over the next day (Christmas Eve) when Ms. Riddarfjarden's camera spontaneously recovered from its earlier demonic possession — although our early 7:00 AM departure meant we missed out on recovering our $6 blanket deposit as the manager wasn't up yet when we attempted to return them. Having felt like we had been spending too much time getting from place to place and not enough time seeing the places themselves, we were keen to get an early start so that we could make it to Waitomo, an area to the southwest full of caves where we hoped to try some "black-water rafting" or similar adventures.

This time we did make it to our goal, with plenty of time to spare. There we took an abseiling adventure down 150-meter-deep Nathan's Canyon, with a friendly guide by the name of Jason. This was the first time I had ever tried anything like that and I'm pretty sure I managed to conquer whatever lingering fears of heights I may've had with it — I was a little unsteady at first but by the end I was pretty sure that the whole experience was one of the best things we did in NZ. When he tells you all it takes to stop yourself is hold your right leg out straight, it's hard to believe, but sure enough it works — we slid down slowly but surely through a deep crevice there in the hills, its sides lined with all manner of green creepers and ferns that served as home to the small glow-worm larvae that are Waitomo's other claim to fame. It being daytime, we couldn't see them there, but after going down a second time and having fun all over again, we went back to take a boat tour through the caves below that passed under cave ceilings illuminated by a constellation of thousands of glow-worms, whose soft shining light (reminiscent of a firefly's) attracts the even tinier insects they feed on. Beautiful.

We left Waitomo a little after 2:00 that afternoon and drove on to Napier, a town on the far east coast of the North Island that was almost totally leveled in an earthquake in 1931; when it was rebuilt, the popular Art Deco style was used in many buildings, giving it a unique architectural flavor. We got a place to stay in "Toad Hall" Backpackers (attached to the Willow Art Gallery) and dinner at "Hell Pizza" in the same building — their "Mordor" special, one of many diabolically-themed offerings, was pretty good. Much of the rest of town was closed for the holiday, though, so all that was left was to pick up a few groceries and return to the hostel for the night.

Christmas morning we were awoken with a present from the hostel proprietors — a rather nice calendar of New Zealand art. We breakfasted on grocery store pastries and took a walk along the Napier beachfront; everything being closed for Christmas morning, though, we didn't linger for too long before getting into the car and pushing south to Wellington. On the way, we made a detour to visit what is billed as the longest place name in the world: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. There's a sign there, and some sheep. Nice.

It was a good bit of driving (probably four or five hours) down from Napier to the southernmost big city on the North Island, and we were pretty tired when we pulled into windy Wellington. We parked the car and checked into the Cambridge Hotel, where we had made advance reservations, mindful of the holiday. Going back to pull the car closer to unload our bags, we found that it was... dead. The engine would grind and the dashboard flicker, but nothing turned over, no matter how much we revved the key. And unlike Ms. Riddarfjarden's camera, it was not going to be reviving any time soon; not wishing to ruin our Christmas evening, we resolved to worry about it tomorrow, and got good Chinese food and didn't worry about it.

The next morning, the car persisted in not starting, so we attempted to call the local rental branch — considering that the major national rental outfits have their branches primarily in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Picton (the port on the other side of the Cook Strait, at the top end of the South Island), this was about as fortuitous a breakdown as we could've hoped for; anywhere else and we probably would've had to call an auto breakdown service and wait out whatever repairs it took.

As a rule I loathe the car rental process — my number one cause of stress during my times running Habitat build trips back in Boston — so I suppose the response we got could've been much worse. Although the guy who came out to meet us was initially convinced it must've just been a drained battery (how we could've drained it in the five minutes it took us to walk into the hotel to check in, and back, I'm not quite clear) and he did indeed succeed in jumping the thing. He let it run for 10 minutes or so, gunned the gas a couple times, and shut it off; it promptly refused to start. He jumped it again, and after admonishing us to "let it run for 15 minutes", took off. Not wanting to chance things, we sat in the car for a half hour — so much for seeing anything of Wellington before we caught the ferry at 1:00 that afternoon — and let the battery "charge".

Completely unsurprisingly, once shut off the engine once again failed to respond to any attempts at starting it up. To his credit, the guy was pretty fast about getting us a replacement, an older Toyota model that despite its age ('94, I think) seemed to handle hills a good bit better than our recently departed Nissan; it lasted through the rest of the trip with no apparent problems. We made it onto the massive Bluebridge ferry south with only about a half hour to spare, but it was a pretty smooth journey and we were able to relax a bit over the next three hours onboard and plan out our adventures in the South Island.

... Which will be a story for next time. Until then, the full album of pictures is here; the South Island installment will be forthcoming shortly.