My heart is bursting with love for Mongolia!

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Trans-Mongolian

August 16, 2011 at 9:19 am

       I’m back on the last leg of the first leg of my trip; the stretch from Ulan Bator to Beijing that I traveled in my second week of the journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, only now the bit I’m on is called the Trans-Mongolian. They have trains operated by China, Russia, or Mongolia running on different days of the week. My train from Moscow was Chinese, and this one is Mongolian. By design they are essentially the same, but aesthetically the Mongolian train has been sort of done up in a cute and decorative way, and is spotless. All the employees aboard are women and they are constantly vacuuming and scrubbing windows. On the Chinese train all the employees were men, and they were constantly smoking and playing poker. It’s interesting to revisit the first places I saw in Asia after I’ve been traveling here for four months. This week I’ve seen a lot of the same scenery I saw at the beginning of May. Now it all looks different somehow.

They confiscated my knife during the security check in the Beijing metro. I’ve taken this knife through at least thirty security checks, including four others in the Beijing metro, and nobody ever said a thing, aside from at the Shanghai train station were they asked to see it and then handed it back to me, apparently unimpressed with the notion that I had the ability to do any damage. I sent it through the x-ray and I saw the young security girl start to get embarrassed and call her friend over. I figured she saw the knife and didn’t know how to ask me about it. I guess in the past I’ve just had the opportunity to get away before they work up the vocabulary to ask me for it. This time I had to go buy a ticket and they had a kid with some English under his belt corner me at the ticket machine and take it from me. Booo, booo I say! I needed that knife for camping in Mongolia. So far I’ve only used it to slice up sausage for sandwiches. I guess now it will live in Beijing and be put to use hacking through dumplings and melons.

Something weird is happening to me. The other day, when we were packing, I asked my friend if she had a jumper. As I said it I wasn’t even sure if I knew what a jumper was. Is it a sweatshirt, or a sweater? Or maybe it’s just a pullover long sleeve shirt? I don’t know, but she’s got one. I’ll have to spy on her wardrobe and solve this mystery. Last night we did some laundry at the hostel, in a washer with the brand name of Fashionable Washer. After two hours in the dryer our clothes were still wet, so we decided to hang them out around the train. Marguerita hung hers and asked me if I was going to hang mine and I started to say, “I can’t be bothered.” Oh no. If I do like Madonna and come home with a British accent someone needs to sit me down and have a talk with me.

Marguerita has been making fun of my accent, she’s Austrailian. Even though she can’t tell the difference between regional American accents, she has picked up on my Midwestern twang and is unwittingly parroting it. She sounds like the cow characters that are supposed to be from Wisconsin in those California dairy commercials. Well, it’s official then, I still have my Midwestern accent. This is a sore subject. Listening to people do overly exaggerated impersonations of me for over a decade has started to get on my nerves. One night when I was out with some drunken people, whom were having a lot of fun with it, I actually made them stop the car. I got out and walked home. It gets under my skin because people always say that I should have lost my accent after twelve years away from Wisconsin, but I argue, if I lived in England for years and came back all, “Cheerio, good day to you dear sir.” I would be considered a pompous jerk, so why should it be altered to be west coast? Anyway, she has no idea what she’s doing. She just thinks it’s a generic American accent. I’m getting in a good dose of mockery. It ain’t so bad.

We met a British girl on the train. She was telling me all about her travels in India. India has been one of the places that I’m extremely excited to go to, and everyone I know whom has traveled to India loves it. In light of the similarities between China and India (overcrowding, filth, cultural differences that are perceived as rude and intrusive) I keep wondering what is the cause for such a huge chasm in perceptions of the two places. There is something going on in India that is allowing travelers to look past all that uncomfortable stuff and see something else, something they love, while in China the majority of travelers express sentiments such as this.

I asked her what she thought and she said that she thinks it’s because India’s individuality is still intact. They have a very vibrant culture that is not trying to mimic western life, so that becomes the focus, the rest is just part of it all. I think she’s right. At my last hostel I saw a program on CNN where they where debating whether China’s cultural IQ has dropped below that of other countries, and they talked a lot about the Chinese people becoming divorced from their own culture. It makes a lot of sense to me. Sometimes you do just feel like you’re walking around in a busier, dirtier, and ruder version of the States, and not really seeing much that’s authentically Chinese. I still plan to go back after Mongolia. I want to see more of the west and the south, which are supposed to be some of the more beautiful landscapes, and then go to Tibet. I’ll be keeping this all in mind. I’m interested to see if, and how, it all feels different within the context of another culture.

Mongolia

Mongolskie krowy

Keeping a blog is an interesting exercise

                         Keeping a blog is an interesting exercise. It’s daily, or bi-daily writing, a catalogue of thoughts and impressions, sometimes just one off thoughts that you filter through later and change your mind about. You write this stuff down and then you post it up where anyone who cares to have look can read it.

I view it as a conversation, transient and changeable ideas being put out there for consideration, but I think a lot of times when we read things it’s been drafted and edited, then reconsidered and redrafted to the point where it feels like we’re stating that opinion as a personal fact. That’s not what I’m doing here, I’m just talking, about impressions, and feelings that come and go, and change daily, weekly, whatever.

Right now I’ve reached a place in my travels where I’m no longer sightseeing, but I’m taking a look at what’s happening around me and trying to understand it. Reaching understanding is not always an easy thing to do. Anyone who is in a relationship, or has family, or needs to communicate an idea at work, knows there is a lot of back and forth to be done before two or more minds are even kind of on the same page. It can be arduous.

I’m trying to understand a little bit about what’s happening in this country I’m in. I’m here without a guide, I don’t have a home base where I can rest up, or mentors who can clue me in. I’m pretty much starting from zero, and there is a lot to take in. People seem to be getting concerned that what I’m saying is too negative, and I’m not really sure how to respond to that. Should I just focus on the positive? Should I consider my perception inherently flawed, therefore unworthy of discussing? Should I lie?

Today I watched a man kick his eight-year-old daughter in a public square full of people until she ran away crying. On another day I saw a scooter driving by with a 2’x2’ wire cage strapped to the back, that had three full grown dogs riding in it, piled on top of each other, with their legs protruding through the wire mesh, and many similar situations with all kinds of other animals, on many other days. I’ve seen people walking around with their limbs rotting off, and villages with piles of trash higher than the roofs of their houses. This stuff makes me feel terribly negative and frustrated, yes. This is not the kind of thing a nice meal and an icy pop can overshadow.

Maybe it sounds like I’m trying to lay some blame on someone for this stuff. I’m sorry if I gave that impression because that’s not my intention. I think circumstances are they way they are here because of a long series of unfortunate events, and power struggles. It’s left the people who are just trying to survive and live their lives in a very precarious situation. Given the same circumstances, it would be this way anywhere else in the world. Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to see, and at times I feel helpless in the midst of it. So, what’s the solution? I should shut up? I should just talk about what I had for dinner, strolling through the park, rainbows? There is a world full of kindness, generosity, love, and mutual respect out there, here too, I know this, but right now I’m dealing with what’s right in front of my eyes, and it’s not all happy and fun, sorry.

Learning is a process. I’m learning a lot right now, and I can’t really say where it will lead. I don’t think that should be the point. It’s slightly uncomfortable at times yes, and if you don’t like it you don’t have to participate, but if you’d like to keep reading I encourage you to keep a sense of humor and take it all with a grain of salt. If you have expectations of a sunshiney, happy-go-lucky, always on the bright side blog, leave now. I’m not that kind of person. I never have been. I never will be. I don’t like those kind of people. It feels dishonest to me. But that’s just me, and I’ll be the first to admit that I probably know nothing.

Cierpliwość

Patience. I suck at patience. I’ve never not sucked at patience. There have been a few points in my life, where I put a lot of time in, and I sort of started to get good at acting patient, but deep down I was still silently willing everything to hurry up, everyone to get out of my way, and to have it all happen according to my schedule. Where is this utopian reality that cares only for my needs? It certainly ain’t in Asia.

I’ve always known this about myself, but I’ve never had to confront it in such a blatant way before; I don’t like people. Face to face, one on one, a human being is a delightful thing, complex and full of insights and surprises. Start adding one or two more people into the mix, then egos and personal agendas can begin to cloud up the landscape of lovely and bring the storms and dog pooh streaked sidewalks. Enter into the masses, and we just turn into straight up donkeys, trampling each other, thinking small, and only looking out for ourselves. I’m guilty. I am not above it. The only way I can get back to feigning patience is to find some space and think long and hard about my donkey ways. Where do you find space in a city so packed that it’s considered the most vertical city in the world because there’s no space left on the ground? My recommendation is to go hang out in a graveyard.

I was walking around today, pushing, shoving, rolling my eyes, and actually saying out loud, Oh my god when people got in my way (my way), when I realized that I probably should cease and desist on my mission to trudge down every street in Hong Kong. Yesterday I found this amazing graveyard built on a hillside, near the water, and jammed up next to a whole mess of high rises. In a city where you can’t move an inch without bumping into someone, this place was completely deserted. Once I realized I needed some relief or I might do something that would get me deported, it was the first place I thought of.

I picked up two beers, a couple of cheeseburgers, and set myself up on the tallest hill. There are memorials with stone tables and benches, I sat and said hello to the folks who were hosting me. I bet they enjoyed the company. Yesterday there was a pack of five black dogs that retreated when they saw me, but watched me carefully as I walked through the graves. They had left me with this incredibly spooky feeling, like I was in an Anne Rice novel. I kept hoping they’d show up again, and bring their vampire friends. They just drink blood, so I wouldn’t have to share my beer or cheeseburgers. Nothing and no one, dogs or otherwise, manifested. I spent the evening in solitude, watching ships sail on the harbor, bugs scuttling by me feet, and the shadows of people as they passed in front of their curtains, on the way from the couch to the refrigerator to refill their iced tea. It was wonderful.

Odpoczynek

I’m couchsurfing right now. That’s the view from my bedroom window, and I have a door that I can close to take a nap, without having to worry that three or four other people will come in during and start rustling around in crinkly plastic bags, unpacking fake Dolce&Gabbana sunglasses, rip off Prada purses, and copy Rolex watches. Ahhhhhh…! Traveling has renewed my appreciation for doing nothing. I’ve always been a fan of it, but people look at you funny when you tell them you’re not doing anything on Saturday night, a holiday weekend, for your birthday, or as a career. People want answers, and “nothing” is not enough. So, you either start doing something, or start making stuff up. It’s exhausting. Actually, you can also just let people look at you funny. I guess that’s OK too.

I really gained a respect for doing nothing in Los Angeles, where a social life can be expensive and hard to get to in traffic. I protested on Friday and Saturday nights, opting instead to take walks, read books, and get in bed by 10:00, so much so that I couldn’t manage to stay up later than that even when there was something I wanted to do. When people would invite me to do things after 10:00, I would spend the day getting psyched on it, and almost always without fail I would cancel at 9:30. Thus began the phase in my life in which people started calling me grandma. I embrace it, welcome it, and love it in fact. You all go out and lead interesting lives. I’ll stay home and knit you some socks.

I also have a renewed appreciation for chemicals. Early on I ran out of a few key ingredients for the recipe of feeling fresh and clean; shampoo, conditioner, and deodorant. In London I picked up some natural deodorant, and in essence what I actually did was toss my five pound note into the toilet and flush it. Regardless of the fact that all it did was make me feel slippery, I was religiously rolling it on, at the bare minimum there was at least some placebo effect. And my hair, it didn’t smell, but it was awful and twiggy, impossible to brush, and I just let it go on like this for a long stretch because I couldn’t find the right stuff. Someone told me Koreans are lacking some enzyme that causes you to have body odor, so they don’t need deodorant. They really hit the jackpot on that one, but it was a bad deal for me because I couldn’t find any of the real stuff for a month, and then I kind of forgot what deodorant was really suppose to do. Finally I’ve found some with real Alzheimer’s causing, effective, and flowery smelling chemicals in it. It’s stupendous. I also got back in the swing of things with my hair and I’ve been walking around absentmindedly stroking it. I look insanely vain, but I don’t care, it’s too damn soft to not pay it any attention. I used to sort of have a suspicion that none of this stuff really did anything, that they were just selling us goo to smear on ourselves that would give us cancer so then we’d have to go to the hospital and pay for that too. That could still be true, but at least I know for certain now that I’m getting what I paid for. Yay for chemicals!

Did you see Harry Potter? I’ve got to admit, Neville Longbottom’s speech at the end got me all choked up.

Kosmiczny krajobraz

Hong Kong

I love both cities, and in fairness to Beijing, I really only explored a small area of it, but my knee jerk reaction is to say Hong Kong all the way. I suppose it depends on what kind of experience you’re looking for. My impression is that Hong Kong is much more cosmopolitan and easier to get along in as a foreigner. There’s a lot of western style food, books, magazines, and movies, if you’re in need of some comfort, but more than that, Hong Kong just seems to be on the cutting edge of things, fashion, technology, ideas… But if you’re looking for a huge shift in your cultural outlook, Beijing could be the place for you. I loved all the history there and then things that just seem straight up weird and mind bending as an American. I think long term Beijing could be more challenging, but mind opening… You probably can’t go wrong with either one. That sounds fun! Good luck!

W drodze do Hong Kongu

If you want to see me sob like a small child, play Vincent (Starry Starry Night) by Don McLean. China has been trying to make me cry since I stepped off the train in Beijing. The other day it almost succeeded. On the long distance busses here they blast music videos to drown out the din of the yammering passengers. On the way back to Guilin from the rice terraces they played Starry Starry night, and I almost lost it. The only thing that saved me was the fact that it was a cover done by a woman who sounded like a mix between Feist and Cat Power. The singer actually could have evoked in me the proper emotions to get the tears to spill, but the producers elected to go down a path that has been blazed by others, such as Milli Vanilli and their management team. They chose a face over an artist for the video. A small and fragile Asian girl, who could not summon the strength to move her lips with any conviction, was pretending to sing. She was clearly not the owner of the voice coming out of the speakers installed in the ceiling of the long distance bus to Guilin, and she was pissing me off. I was supposed to be crying. Instead I was daydreaming about strapping her to a dolly and wheeling her into a room with a defibrillator. It was probably for the best, no need to freak out the other bus riders unnecessarily.

I was sitting next to a guy I had met on the bus to Dazhai. They pulled this strange move on the way up there. They stop about a half hour before you reach the city. Women in uniform get on and tell you that you need to pay them 80 yuan or get off the bus, not in an extremely kind or explanatory fashion. All the Chinese passengers were readily paying, and the only two westerners, him and me, were confused, questioning, and flipping through books trying to understand what was going on. The woman robbing us spoke perfect English, but she was kind of a bitch about it, clearly fed up with the stupidity of travelers such as ourselves, and not overly willing to walk us through the reasons we were expected to pay her. She said we needed to pay to enter the scenic area, and everything we wanted, food, accommodations, etc., was inside the scenic area. Even though they had a huge gate and ticket booth set up at the entrance to the town (scenic area), for some reason you couldn’t just pay there when you arrived. Baffling.

Out of necessity, I’ve become comfortable living in a state of perpetual bafflement. When my waffles and ice cream scoops are garnished with tomatoes, I no longer question it. When they consider it rude to blow your nose in a tissue, only to walk outside and watch people farmer blow on the sidewalk and summon wads of phlegm from the depths of their bodies, hurtling it into the small circumference surrounding you, which could be considered personal space, I don’t judge, I simply hum a cheerful ditty to myself. When the upscale coffee shop provides tiny television monitors at each table for entertainment, and plays a video of a monkey, in scarf and overalls, leading a bulldog wearing a fanny pack around the city on a leash, through the park, brown puddles, the grocery store, and appliance shopping, I don’t ask myself why, instead, I set my mind to deciding if I would prefer to be the monkey or the bulldog. I’m finding it’s best not to ask questions in China.

Back on the bus, the only other westerner and myself became friends. Our shared confusion united us. After a small chat we found out we were staying at the same guesthouse. We decided to split a room, which left us each paying just a couple of dollars per night. This sounds like a deal, but really it was only almost a fair trade, as we had to share the place with all kinds of other life forms; roaches, slugs, spiders, beetles, mosquitoes, and years worth of dirt and grime that couldn’t be scrubbed away, even if someone were actually trying to.

We spent the next couple of days together, along with other travelers we met, hiking the rice terraces, and sharing beers and strange meals. For breakfast I had what was called A Kind of Omelet. Just as I was discovering it was, in fact, a bug omelet, a man trying to sell us a cucumber descended upon our table, scooping up one of our coffees, putting his thumb in it, and helping himself to a slobbery sip. The owner of the guesthouse chased after him with a broom, in a way that would suggest this was a common routine for the two of them.

On our final evening in Dazhai, we got into a philosophical debate about the fate of the human race, as dictated by the usage of Facebook. I’m pro Facebook. I consider this mode of interaction a necessary and inevitable step in our social evolution. I hesitate to make declarations about it consuming us to the point that we’re no longer able to have face-to-face relations. I think it’s leading us to something that will ultimately connect us in a deeper way, rather than isolate us. I got pretty intense about it, and this encouraged the boys to be equally as ridiculous, by comparing the author of an article in favor of abandoning Facebook to Galileo. Completely unreasonable, but I appreciate the comic effect. In light of the tone of our final night together, I’m happy that the faceless woman’s rendition of Starry Starry Night wasn’t able to bring me to tears on the bus. Although, sometimes it’s fun to be perceived as an emotional basket case, that day I wasn’t really in the mood for it. I was more in the mood for being a monkey in overalls, shopping with my companion, the bulldog.

Once we were back in Guilin, we said goodbye without exchanging our Facebook info. I hadn’t showered in two days. It seemed futile to shower in a bathroom that I was cleaner than. I was thinking about staying one more night in the hostel I had been in before, to clean up then make arrangements for the bus to Hong Kong. I went there for lunch and to use the Internet, but decided not to stay after listening to the guys at the neighboring table exchanging stories about different places they had puked throughout China. I started having flashbacks to the first night I had spent in the hostel, where I ended up sitting in the lobby for a sleepless evening, with fifty or sixty mosquitoes drinking blood from my ankles, because even though I had asked nicely, twice, the guy in the bunk below me wouldn’t stop having sex with the girl he had brought into the room. Rather than hanging out with drunken tourists again, I opted to stay unshowered for a third day and get on the bus right away.

Getting places in China is really difficult. Nothing is written in English, and even when the sign language routine kind of works, everyone has a completely different version of what you need to do.

There’s no bus there. You have to transfer. Take the train. No, get the bus from the train station, not the bus station. You have to go through another city. What are you doing, why don’t you just get a direct bus?

It’s hard for everyone involved. I can see the frustration on the faces of the people trying to help me. I feel a lot of guilt over it. I’m in China and I can’t really say anything in Chinese, but it’s just not possible for me to learn the language of every place that I’m traveling to. I’m waiting impatiently for the day that we will have microchips installed into our brains that allow us to instantly download an entire language and speak fluently. We all managed to combine our brainpower and I got a ticket on an overnight bus to Hong Kong. I boarded the bus and to my absolute delight it was filled with rows of beds. YA-HOO! It was like coming home and finding out mom bought Coco Puffs instead of Corn Flakes. Thanks mom!

Riding the bus recumbent is an amazing experience. Watching night markets, people having dinner, neon signs, and masses of traffic flying by while lying down is surreal. There’s a window the length of your sleeper right next to you, so everyone on the street can see you stretched out in bed. I kept checking for reactions from people outside, like, Hey I’m horizontal! No one but me seemed to find it all that noteworthy. I was woken up often, by the sensation that the bus was about to tip over. This was followed by the memory of a couple of head-on truck collisions and an overturned van we saw on the way to Dazhai. As far as I can tell, the only rule of the road here is to get out of the way. One of the hostel owners I met said that traffic in China is much more chaotic, but there are fewer fatal accidents because no one feels they own any part of the road. Cars, bikes, busses, vans, and trucks are everywhere, all over every side of the road, so you’re more aware, and more willing to yield. They’re extremely fearless and artful in their maneuvers, and I’m here to type about it, so I guess we did OK.

Hong Kong has a totally different feeling from Mainland China. It’s very cosmopolitan and easy to navigate, also expensive. It’s been dumping rain since I arrived, so I haven’t done much, aside from walking around in some markets and along The Avenue of Stars. Right now I’m in Starbucks and they’re playing Buena Vista Social Club. I used to laugh at people who frequented Starbucks when they were in other countries, but now I totally get it. I’ve started to have little episodes of homesickness. Sitting here with my computer and coffee I can completely lose myself in the illusion that I’m in Los Angeles, where I have my own bed and home, with two cuddly cats there waiting to meow me a hello, and sit in my lap while I watch a movie. Wanna come over for dinner and then go get a drink? Cool, see you at 8. xoxo.

Just got off the sleeper bus from Guilin to Hong Kong.

Tarasy ryżowe