Inner Mongolia

Sorry this took so long. I have been busy with my internship.

Last weekend I went to Inner Mongolia with my Abroad China group. It was an absolute blast. We took the overnight train, with beds stacked three high throughout the train car- no rooms, just beds. The beds were not particularly soft, and it was tough trying to get to sleep, but I managed to get a few hours squeezed in.

When we arrived, we took a bus to the grasslands. This was sort of a tourist trap, but since it was out in the middle of nowhere, and there weren’t a lot of tourists, it wasn’t cheesy or artificial. As we got off the bus, the Mongolians sang a traditional song and gave us baijiu- literally “white liquor”, but it is a rice liquor. We dipped our finger in the baijiu and flicked three times: once for the earth, once for the sky, and once just for us. Then we took a big swig. Baijiu tastes a little like rubbing alcohol with a dash of turpentine. Everyone had baijiu face, which entails involuntary twisting of the mouth, shaking of the head, and eyes rolling up into the skull.

After this we ate a lunch and headed out to ride horses. My friend, Sam, and I were last in line to get horses, and they ran out. So we “had” to ride 4-wheelers.

It was awesome.

We rode out to a small village, making sure we waved bye to all of the horse-riders, and drank milk tea and ate some sort of bread/noodle stuff. It wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t eat it every day, but once in my life isn’t bad.

When we drove back (very safely, mom) we had dinner. Halfway through the meal they dressed two of our interns up in traditional Mongolian dress and had some sort of ritual including the dreaded baijiu. Then they brought our whole roasted sheep. And to add to the realistic factor, they put lettuce in the mouths, as if they were still alive and grazing in a lettuce field. But they sure were tasty.

That night, there were fireworks and music. And more baijiu. Then, after the Mongolians got nice and liquored up, they decided to have a horse race, and wrestling matches.

The next morning, we woke up, jumped on the bus, and headed to the Gobi desert. Thankfully the sun was hidden behind the clouds, and it was relatively cool. We struggled our way up the dune to these giant vehicles that looked straight out of Star Wars. We drove out to a dune a little farther in the desert. Unfortunately, these pictures don’t quite capture the jaw-dropping vastness of the desert. It was breathtaking.

Then we got to ride camels. We saw a Middle Eastern guy…

Just kidding, that’s me! Chinese people thought it was one of the funnier things they had seen, I got about 175 pictures taken of and with me.

The camels were fun, I got to sit on a camel at the circus one year when I was little, but it was pretty exciting to ride a camel in the Gobi desert. The cool thing about camels is that they get down on their knees, and you don’t have to climb up on top of them like horses. You just sit down on them and they stand up, and when you’re done riding they get back on their knees and you just stand up and get off.

As we rode around, we got to see some sand castles the Mongolians made. We weren’t able to get close, but they were pretty interesting. The sand castles are those mounds in the last picture.

Things were starting to wrap up, so we got ready to leave. This meant sliding down the dune, on a sled. It was so cool. You can get going pretty fast on the dunes, because they are steep. One guy who wasn’t in our group lost control halfway down and slid about 15 feet without his sled. It was pretty funny, and he wasn’t hurt, so we all had a good laugh- he thought it was funny himself.

After that we grabbed dinner and jumped on the train. I didn’t have any problem going to sleep. At least there wasn’t any baijiu on the train…

By the way, I got my hair cut by a friend of ours named Trent. Australians sure can cut hair good. We did the obligatory Mohawk and mullet halfway through. In my modest opinion, I look pretty good.