Brave Rolling Cones Are on the Air Again
Team of adventurists who drove hard their pink ice-cream truck from America to Asia reports from the capital of Mongolia (Updated: Sept. 2, 2009)
Oh, one more thing: have we told you that the brave adventurists are sponsored by TravelPapa.com?
â–º September 2, 2009
Ulaanbaatar - Guns, Fistfights and Ladies
As our truck broke and we took alternate transportation for the last third of the rally, we got in to Ulaanbaatar several days ahead of schedule, which left us a week to spend in the city. I have to say, it's a rough place, and not especially welcoming. I've been to Taiwan and Japan before, and we'd just crossed a huge swath of central Asia, so I had something to compare it to.The Taiwanese, Uzbeks, Turkmens and Azeris were incredibly friendly and hospitable to travelers. The Japanese are very polite, but reserved in such a way that you can't really get to know anyone. The Tajiks were pleasant but kept trying to rip us off. The Mongolians though, are downright contemptuous while trying to rip you off, and crime and violence are conspicuous problems, whereas in other places I've been they're often below the surface as far as the traveler is concerned.
One night we went out to a nightclub with some other ralliers (ironically named "Face"), two Mongolian guys started a scuffling/pushing thing with some British fellows and I got punched in the face coming over to help out. Let me note here that I was extremely disappointed in Andrew and the British guys who were there, none of whom threw a punch, instead grabbing me from behind to break up the fight. Our hostel owner and some expats we later talked to let us know that bar fights, both among Mongolians and started with Westerners as a regrettable part of club life in Ulaanbaatar, and they chalked it up to macho guys who fear Westerners getting together with Mongolian women.
In the Black Market a few days later (yes, the big open air market is called the Black Market for some reason), a big guy purposely turned and walked into me while his smaller friend tried to pick my pocket. I saw it coming and spun around to shove the smaller guy away from me, also having planned ahead by keeping my stuff in my zippered jacket pockets. The smaller guy looked at me like "Who, me?!" and then he and the big guy quickly vaporized. It was a rush, but not really what you want during your souveneir buying experience.
On several occasions we found ourselves dealing with some "confusion" or "miscounting" of money where we had to strenuously argue to avoid overpaying. The owners of a later hostel we stayed at (not UB Guesthouse) could never keep track of how many days we'd paid for, but it was always a mistake in their favor, trying to get us to pay for extra days or pay twice for one bed. On the train in from Irkutsk a moneychanger shorted me by misconverting my rubles and then quickly disappeared before I could sort them out. Finally, one night Andrew and I got into a very ugly spat trying to leave a strip-club (those lascivious Brits took us there!) which, despite being super-tight about collecting entry fees and the girl collecting money noticing my very memorable black eye on the way in, had the nerve to claim we hadn't paid when we were tried to leave. We had to argue with several staff who had LOCKED the front door, trapping us. They only backed off when we refused to argue with them anymore and demanded they call the police.
Not that it was all bad. We had some great times meeting with the other rally teams and walking around the city, trying various Mongolian brews, buying furry hats and camel wool garments. Joe and I had a blast checking out the aging Natural History museum. The Paleontology section was very impressive, with a full monstrous T-rex skeleton and lots of smaller ones, including two fighting dinosaurs (raptor vs. mini-triceratops creature!) that were trapped under a collapsing sand dune. However, the rest of the place featured some rather poor taxidermy, including entire schools of fish with googly eyes, a deer with tiny fangs, and a rodent with what must have been bear eyes they were so oversized for its tiny head. We also went to a shooting range in the hills outside Ulaanbaatar. The brochure had advertised rocket propelled grenades and tank driving, but like everything in Central Asia, expectations were lowered upon arrival and we settled for firing a sniper rifle, an AK-47, and this slick looking Russian pistol. Cooter, from South Carolina, was in the big group with us and was far and away the best shot, hitting the farthest target on the range with his first shot and then aiming at rocks and marmots way up in the hills behind the range. I did well with the AK and pistol; the sniper rifle was too easy to aim given the target distance, but the kick-back kept slaming the scope into our eyes. They did have non-driving tanks so we at least got some great photos. In the end, you take the good with the bad, and all told it was still an unforgettable week. If you're ever deciding on an Asian vacation though, hit up Uzbekistan or Turkey before you go to Mongolia, unless you're really eager to try some Buuz.
â–º September 1, 2009
Mongolia at Last
Our train rolled into Ulaanbaatar on a bright, crisp Saturday morning. We got a ride to "UB Guesthouse" hostel, unpacked, and then set about looking for food. All up and down the streets near our hostel were fast-food looking places with the words "Бууз" or "хуушууp" in their name, which Joe informed us are pronounced "boats and hoesher" according to the vagaries of Mongolian-style cyrillic. I'm going to just misspell them in their phonetic form in this post so you can converse with friends and sound like a real Mongolian. All Mongolian cuisine begins with beef or mutton ground up and mixed with onions and spices. In the case of Hoesher, the cook rolls dough into circles, then places the meat inside the dough and folds the dough in half, creating a flat half-circular pocket. The cook then closes the pockets by pressing the edges together. After making the pockets, the cook fries them in oil until the dough turns golden brown, and then they're served hot and you can eat them by hand. Boats are pretty similar, although they're steamed and come out more like large-sized dumplings and leak a mix of oil and lard that congeals on your plate by the end of the meal. It's best to switch back and forth between them so you don't get worn out. For the next week we ate these at pretty much every meal, often as a rather filling appetizer. We'd all lost weight in the preceding weeks and had some work to do. As we worked through every restaurant on our street we also did some menu exploration (these fast food places all had nearly identical menus) and got acquainted with "Tsuivan," a noodle and mutton dish, and "Zraz," which is a boiled egg wrapped in mutton with a little slit so it looks like a big meat eyeball sitting on your plate.
On Saturday night we went to the Mongol Rally arrival party where we met up with lots of old friends, many of whom we hadn't seen since the party in the Czech Republic a month earlier. We also saw a lot of people wearing Rolling Cones shirts who we'd long forgotten giving them to. Our British lady friends Millie and Steph arrived safely without much trouble. Cooter and Domino, our buddies in overalls, unfortunately had a falling out over a destroyed transmission after hitting a big rock, but did tow their car the remaining few hundred miles to Mongolia. We had some drinks, gave out the remaining t-shirts and watched some traditional Mongolian music and dances by some of the kids from an orphanage that benefits from Mongol Rally charity efforts. We gave the kids the remaining space ice cream and space food sticks and it was a big hit. Andrew and I met a cool local guy named Tsog who bought us some drinks and then dinner. At 25, he's a manager at a Telecom firm and has a kid on the way.
Over the next week we stopped by the finish line a couple times to check on the arriving cars. The Jersey Boys, who busted their radiator before the start of the rally, ended up getting things fixed and made it in good time. Great Balls of Fur, having gas mileage trouble, cut off the back half of their firetruck and then apparently slid all over the road for the last week of the trip without any weight on the back wheels. The highlight of the night was when one of the local cover bands (lots and lots of Beatles) let some ralliers get on stage to jam. The guitar was taken so I picked up a bass and played along to "Magic Carpet Ride," some Dispatch song, and "Livin' on a Prayer." The party ended abruptly around midnight when the power went out.
Next post I'll tell a few more stories about Ulaanbaatar and then try to dig for some insight from this whole crazy adventure.
Alex
