Robbe and Micki Travel the World

We arrived in Mongolia on the 19th of October. Lonely Planet tells us that Ulan Bator can by noe stretch of the imagination be called beautiful and we definitely second that! Take what you think a lonely russian city looked like at the hight of the communist era and you are somewhere close. Needless to say, our first impression was not very good, however we soon discovered that behind the grime and dust, UB actually has some things going for it. Good food and some very hospitable people (UB Guesthouse rules!) helped make things a little better. We got set up and immediately booked a tour around central Mongolia (to the white lake) so as to get out of the city asap. We made a group of 5 with two sedish girls (Agnes and Kajsa) and an american guy called Jordy.

side note: Anyone remember the 5 year old french popstar Jordy? Dure dure d'etre bebe? Needless to day many jokes were made at his expense :D

We also had the best driver in Mongolia called Mishka and his awesome ride the mish-mobile. Mishka also got a load of nicknames: Mish-kebab, Mish-master and THE mish. He spoke a little english and was a very small guy (unlike other mongolians, who are pretty big and tough by nature) but he sure could handle business!

The theme of the trip was pretty much start at 9 am. Lunch and tourist attraction around 1 and finally arrive at place to sleep around 6 pm. We slept in gers that families had as hotels for anyone that needed a place to crash. We ate the same thing they did and usually ended up learning a little about their daily life. Be the second day the temperature dropped to about minus 2 in the day and minus 15 in the night which was not helped by the strong winds on the open plains. Nights were very cold but we had sleeping bags and extra blankets to see us through the nights. On the third day we arrived at white lake which was very beautiful indeed and made the trip worthwhile. We hiked up to a very big hill nearby and took a long walk by the lake on the 4th day. The family we stayed at was very nice and we had a fair bit of interaction with them. I even got to go play doctor when their 2 year old child burned his arm very badly on the furnace in their ger. We finally got back to UB on day six having experienced most of what Mongolia has to offer including:

Mutton: Lot's of it and only it... Mongolians eat nothing else. Mutton with either noodles or rice with potatoes thrown in. Either in soup or fried form. They have neer seen any green vegetables in their lives.

Airag: Fermented mare's milk. As strong as beer and tastes what like sour milk

Yak milk tea: weird stuff

Salt tea: Exactly what it says on the bottle... tea with salt in it

Sleeping in a ger: Like sleeping in a cold army tent. Most of the Mongolian nomads live in these and they are the only sign of civilisation outside UB. A lot of them run on solar power or generators and most have a satelite so that they get the sky sports package as well as the movie chanels... dubbed of course.

Driving offroad in the middle of nowhere: We seriously drove many stretches of 30 minutes to several hours without seeing anything but hills and flat plains (without any kind of vegetation).

Birds of prey: I have never seen so many falcons etc. in my life. They are everywhere. We even saw an eagle that had a wingspan of say 1,5 if not 2 meters.

Mongolian toilets: Just a hole in the ground with two planks on either side. Sometimes there was a wall around it made of wood sometimes only half a wall... See Mickis pictures :) It's actually not as bad as it sounds, once you get used to it. Would I make a mongolian toilet outside my own house? No friggin way!!!

We got back to UB on saturday and left on sunday morning, after a long shower and some sleep, for Beijing where we are now ofcourse. The first thing we did in Beijing? GO STRAIGHT TO MCDONALDS :D We ate like we had never eaten before. Now of course we have gone local but the Big Mac was the best thing I have ever eaten... including several micheline star restaurants.

On monday (after McDonalds) we just walked around the city center which is very clean and touristy. Designer shops and huge malls everywhere but behind the facades you can clearly see what Beijing looked like before. On tuesday we checked out Tiananmen sq. and the forbidden city (we couldn't find the starbucks though) and in the evening we had Beijing Duck at a famous restaurant to celebrate Mickis birthday a little behind schedule. Today we went back to Tiananmen sq. and checked out the Mao memorial hall to make sure the "maukku" really is dead and sure enough there he is covered by a rad flag with the hammer and sicle on it. Instead of it being like "Lenska's" mosoleum it was super crowded and moving around the building was like being in a huge herd of cattle with secret police and guards shouting and pushing the crowd along. Finally we went to the western train station to buy our tickets to Xi'an. The train station is the biggest I have ever seen! Now we are back at the hostel writing this with tickets in hand.

sidenote: We have run into an incredible amount of "art students" and other very strange looking people wanting to give us "free" or very expensive guided tours around the city. People, well almost everyone has tried to sell us postcards, stamps, flags, maps, chopsticks, bouncy balls and when we kindly said no, they moved over to selling us rolexes :D It's like being back in Thailand again. Another funny thing is that all the signs in the forbidden city are sponsored by American Express!

So now you guys are up to speed on what has happend!

Take care now, bye bye then!

Bobby and Micki

p.s: Please excuse bad spelling etc. No need to nag, you get what I was trying to say, when I was writing what I was trying to say what has happened, when it did do that... Nevermind...

p.p.s: Huge cheer from here as Liverpool beat Chelski away at Stamford Bridge on the weekend! First home loss for Chelsea at home in 85 games!!!