At Long Last

It's been 80 days or so since I updated this blog. And about 2 months since I broke my foot. I'm pretty sure those things are connected. So here is a quick twitteresque update of my life.

-Yes, I'm still in Korea, they haven't evacuated the foreigners due to the impending doom caused by North Korea. Personally I don't think anything serious will ever happen, South Korea is too concerned about their economy to get involved in a war.

-I'm still teaching. In fact, right now it is Winter Camp time. I am teaching 3-4 elementary students basic English. There were supposed to be 10 kids in the class, but on average only 4 show up. Does that reflect on my teaching ability? I'm not sure. Unfortunately I have to work five days this week. One more than my usual 4. I usually spend my Mondays watching the NFL, planning the weeks lessons and generally faffing about on Facebook. OK enough about me....wait this is all about me, it's my damn blog.

This photo is the moment my life changed forever. (too dramatic?) Well this is about a half a second before I broke my foot. The big Korean fella landed with his hip on my left foot. It felt my foot was instantly on fire. I haven't broken a bone in about 25 years, and it's nothing I want to experience again, especially breaking a bone in the lower body. And it kicked off a chain reaction of shittyness for about a month.
-First, it changed all my running plans. I had a half marathon in the cards. I was in really good shape and was planning on a PR. I was also planning on collecting some nice first place reward money. But that didn't happen.
-Then I got sick, it started out as just a common cold, something that everyone in Korea gets about 7 times a year. But after about 10 days in turned into the flu or something. On a taxi ride home one night I started shaking so bad I could barely get my key in the door. That night I had a few intense vomiting sessions, which resulted in a very sore rib. Sore enough for an X-ray. There didn't seem to be any damage, but at one point I thought I was having a heart attack. So now I had a broken foot, sore ribs and felt horrible.
-To complete my pity party. Many a plan had to be canceled and postponed. Such as climbing plans and hiking trips to check out the changing leaves. One thing I hadn't done much of over here was get out to the mountains. That was the plan for November, Now I have to wait till next year...wait, I won't be here.


It wasn't horrible forever though. It was just one of the highs and lows people have in life. Eventually everything improved. My green cast eventually came off after 5 weeks. It was cut off by Dr. Koss, board certified master of his own body and someone addicted to physical activity. I had to get out and play some ultimate frisbee, dance around and test it out. It still hurt a bit but now it's slowly improving. The bone is OK but the ligaments feel like they were stretched, pulled, twisted and generally agitated. They are still trying to find their original strength and location in my foot.

In other news Thanksgiving and Christmas have passed and many potlucks were attended. Complete with mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberries and pumpkin pie. It's amazing what you can get at Costco. It really makes the transition to living in a foreign country convenient. (too convenient maybe?) It was also really nice to spend the holidays with such great people over here. It wasn't as good as being with the real fam, but everyone over here pulls it together and puts on a good party.


Halloween. Matt and I dressed up as rednecks. There wasn't much acting involved for either of us. All we had to do was drink a bunch, make weird faces, insult people, laugh obnoxiously and tell rude jokes. And when drinking in Korea it's amazing how time flies. On many a night it has gone from 12:30 to 4am in about 30 minutes. Sometimes I feel there is some time traveling property in Korean beer.


Das Racist. Have you ever herd of 'em Mom? I didn't think so. But get on the youtube and check it out. They're hot. They are a couple of Brooklyn rappers who stopped by Busan to sling some rhymes for about a half hour, then call it a night and get real drunk. It was a very short show and real weird. There was some youtube/facebook phenomena going on. It's like instead of just enjoying yourself, everyone must photograph and record the whole show. Put down the technology and enjoy yourself people. What you're doing isn't ground breaking and creative, that's what the people on stage are doing. I know you want to show your 600 "friends" that you're doing something cool but just put down the camera for a couple minutes and enjoy the moment without documenting every second. Rant over.


The Busan Sonic Boom, the local hoops team. I'm now on board the Boom express. I've been to about 4 games now and it's pretty fun. The tickets are 8 bucks, you can bring your own food and drinks and the team is actually decent. I think they are the highest scoring team in the league.

The team, like all the other teams is sponsored by a major Korean corporation. Some people may not like the blatant corporate commercialism of the sponsorship, but I don't really mind. It helps keep the games affordable for the fans. Last week we traveled to an away game with the team. The round trip bus ride cost 3000 won and the game ticket was 4000. They also threw in lunch and dinner. Thanks KT Sonic Boom!


Now that the foot is better and my mood has improved I have been spending my free time out on the bike. I'm continually finding new neighborhoods, lightly trafficked roads and pleasant views. As well as ass hat taxi drivers who need to honk at the sight of a bicycle. I have been down to the local fish market on the harbor a couple times and have taken a few nice shots.

The weather is sometimes a little chilly, but it seems to be sunny 6 days a week. There's nothing to complain about with that.











I took this shot yesterday and it sums up life in Busan. Somewhat cluttered and hectic. But also peaceful and beautiful. There's the old houses with water tanks on the roof. While in the background there are new high rise apartments. You can see cranes and shipping containers, mountains as well as the sea. I really think it captures a lot of what this city has to offer.

Roktober

The highly anticipated month of October is among us and everything is fantastic. Busan is in the midst of an International Film Festival. (I saw a movie last night, just to check PIFF off the list.) The weather is beautiful. It's mid October and it's 75 degrees and sunny. I've spent the last 2 weekends on the beach playing ludicrous amounts of volleyball and Ultimate Frisbee. Even school is going well. When I say well I mean a bunch of canceled classes. This is due to the upcoming school sports day where each grade does a choreographed dance, as well as a bunch of relay races, octopus eating contests and races to see who can send the fastest text message.

But the coolest thing I did was win a 10k that traversed the Diamond Bridge, one of the landmarks of Busan. This was another race that I failed to officially enter, therefore I was ineligible for the first place prize money. But to win a race when I had no expectations was great. It was just a pure, fun, organic running experience. I showed up at the course about 30 minutes ahead of time after saying out till 5 am 2 nights before, then spending the next day on the beach. I barely warmed up and to start the race I was nearly instantly 100 to 200 yards behind the leader. But I slowly warmed up and kept him with in reach. By the halfway point I was in fourth, and by 6k I was in second and had my eyes set on the leader, who was about 6 lane lines ahead of me on the deserted bridge. By now I had a tailwind and was feeling awesome. I slowly walked the leader down. When I passed him in the last K he noticed I didn't have a number, so he let me go. That was a bummer, I thought he would have wanted to race. I ended up running about 2 minutes faster than I though. So it felt great to be in such great shape after taking much of the summer off from running due to travel and the oppressive heat and humidity.

In other news October is also full of outdoor music shows, fireworks festivals, More ultimate frisbee road trips and hopefully more beautiful weather. Here are pics from last weekend. it was fun.
















Nothing says Hi class like a necklace that says, "Hi class."

Look Below...

I updated my blog with a few things from Japan. It's below the Night photos of Busan.

Check it out.

Busan at night

Before I put up some crappy photos from Japan I thought I'd put up some nice ones on my little city, Busan. I found myself with a little free time so I biked up to one of the many mountains looking out over the city and made some pictures. These are from South Busan, near the fish market and the port of Busan looking out at Youngdo Island and other northern areas.

 

 

 

 

8 days in Japan

Last week, Korea had a little holiday, called Chuseok. This is like their Thanksgiving. Where families travel across the country and sit in horrible traffic so they can share a day or 2 of traditional food with their uncles, aunts and cousins. It's also gives foreign English teachers, or at least those in public schools a whole week of vacation. That is until 3 hours before your flight your school tells you that since you are going abroad you have to take vacation days, even though the school is completely closed for the week. But that's another story, probably for one of the many blogs out their that complain about Korea until their blue in the face. I will share a few photos, talk about our hike up Mt. Fuji and compare some of the differences between Japan and it's hectic, frantic, mono stylistic neighbor. South Korea



Our trip of 4 guys started smoothly, we all showed up to the airport at exactly the same time...about a hour too early. We caught our first flight to Fukuoka, then we had to re-check our bags for the flight to Tokyo. That's when we hit the road block. Our boy Jake (pictured above) was planning on splitting off from us and doing some hiking in some mountains no one has ever heard of while Matt, Mack and myself summited one of the most famous mountains in the world, Mt. Fuji. Since he was camping, he thought he'd bring some white gas along on the flight so he wouldn't have to search around for it Japan. (That's sensible and wise, but highly illegal.) The agents with Air Nippon were very kind and passive aggressive. They figured they knew Jake had a connecting flight and would cave to their demands. But they were being a little too demanding. Jake's plan was to dump out the gas, check the bag and make the flight. Air Nippon's plan was keep the gas bottles, and the stove. They said even if Jake dumped out the gas it would still smell like gas, which was bad. Now they were making about as much sense as my Principal and his crazy talk about using vacation days when the school's closed.
To quickly end the story,(who like to read, right?) Jake missed the flight, stayed in Fukouka, slept at an Internet cafe, (it's a normal thing to do in Japan.) Then took a night bus to Tokyo, where he met up with the three of us to collect his tent which he had us carry.


We spent a bunch of time comparing the fashion and style on the boys and girls in Tokyo to the boys and girls of Busan. What I realized Is this is like comparing the fashions of South Beach to those of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Tokyoites seemed much more open, expressive, creative, affluent, tanned and original compared to Busanites. Cruising around Shabuya, which is full of shops, malls and boutiques and kids with money we just gawked at all the girls literally dressed like dolls and the kids who looked like goth rockers.
The biggest difference between Tokyo and Busan, is that in Busan everyone dresses the same, more or less and seem timid to express themselves with fashion. The colors are usually dark. The shirts are baggy and colored in an English slogan that probably makes no sense and the shorts are short. That's the style for ladies. For the fellas it's usually A man purse and a shirt with a teddy bear on it...I'm kidding...not really.

href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2pUGkWQIK5H0VZdH_A3tWpGFVr65ic535A7gULLVAOBljwm5ghknzYLqV9SOEIR5qXCg_TzjF0Zrjfw8yuIr5_BZH0dXgqlWjpIPlAcFEAxt2DjpuBeInY2TlxOxawL89dPoSwV1Gynk/s1600/IMG_2395.JPG">



We were lucky enough to be in Tokyo when a Sumo tournament was taking place. These only take place three times a year. We paid 2100yen for some nose bleed seats. But it was still pretty cool. These were some big guys. Especially when in the later rounds. The force that the these guys would crash into each other with is amazing. Sometimes of they would really fight too. Not like a back ally fight, but grabbing, slapping and shoving. They displayed tremendous balance as well. it seemd like one guy was on the verge of being shoved out, only to turn his opponent and shove him out of the ring. Quite a few if the wrestlers weren't actually Japanese. They may have been from Mongolia or Eastern Europe. But in the program they all had Japanese names.


It's a common thing to sleep in a capsule in Tokyo, so that's what we did. It was a capsule hostel, but the name capsule is a little misleading. I didn't feel like an astronaut and i didn't get claustrophobic, it was actually quite spacious, as you can see. This one did eat one of my favorite shirts though.

Over all our trip to Tokyo was cool, but I don't feel like I got the full experience. We went to some of the wrong neighborhoods at the wrong times and ended up walking around the red light district getting propositioned by men from Nigeria and Ghana. They would say thing like, "you like girl, 3000 yen, 90 minutes. You can touch." If it was 3000 yen for the three of us, maybe, but for 1 guy, c'mon. Plus we realized in Japan it's hard to find a real bar. There are big buildings with a bunch of little neon signs reading "Passion," "Heaven" or "Tasteful Pleasure." Sometimes it seemed Japan was selling nothing but sex, or at least the company of a lady for a few minutes.


One major reason for the Japan trip was to climb Mt Fuji. But it wouldn't be easy logistically because we were outside of "climbing season." Which is only July and August, when bus companies run direct buses to the highest station on the mountain, then have return buses a few hours later. Our trip included a bus ride, then a futile attempt at hitchhiking at dusk, then paying a taxi 2000yen each for the 30 minute ride to the 5th station, where the hiking starts. 2000yen isn't bad for a taxi, considering the bus one way is 1500 from the same place.

Our plan was to hike the mountain starting when we should be going to bed if it were a regular night back in the ROK, that way we would summit right before sunrise. We ended up starting the hike around 10:15pm. I wanted to start a little later but it's hard to stay still when you see groups of other hikers hitting the trail. I figured it was better to stay low as long as possible where it's warm, rather than have to wait for 2 hours at 13000 feet for the sunrise.

To describe the hike in 1 word I would use: Delirious, or maybe patient, or slow. One of those would work. We had 7 hours to climb about 1500M in the dark, when my body would rather be sleeping. It ended up being a very long and tedious hike filled with many, many breaks. We were told all the little teahouses that served 6 dollar ramen and 4 dollar coffee were all closed, but they were in fact all open and offered us places to rest, at least outside, about every 20 minutes. So we would climb for 20, then rest for almost the same. Or until we got cold. Then start slowly hiking. We hiked fast enough to stay warm, but not break a sweat. We had a beautiful night and the weather was great actually, considering it was the 20th of September. The only real hiccup was our buddy Matt. Who decided to catch a cold the night before we left for Japan. His lungs weren't cooperating, and mix in the altitude, it was a real struggle. But he's a trooper and made it to the top with us.

After many breaks we reached the summit about 10 minutes before sunrise. Too our surprise there must have been 200 people up there. Since it was so late in the season we were expecting a fraction of that.


The view towards the east was beautiful. And being so high above the clouds after climbing through the night was very rewarding. We stayed up top for about 45 minutes taking pictures, drinking some whiskey and watching the sky light up and the views change. The views of the clouds below were especially cool. They looked liked massive frozen waves. And since we hadn't slept all night our brains were getting pretty silly.

Tommy Lee Jones. He was everywhere. Billboards, vending machines, buses maybe. It reminded me and everyone else about Bill Murray's character in Lost In translation. Where an older actor comes to Japan for a week to make a couple million dollars poising for photos to endorse some whiskey.



We spent the next couple days after Fuji down in Kyoto. First we rested after our long hike and brutal night bus from Tokyo. But we soon got out into the city to take in all it's history, beauty and culture. It seems around every corner was a garden, or craft shop, or park, or temple, or statue, or Geisha, or fake geisha dressed up for tourists.

The thing to do in Kyoto is ride bikes, since it's so flat. We rented bikes for 100yen, which is possibly the greatest deal in Japan. We stared out as a group of three, but Mack got lost after the second temple we visited. he never saw him again until the airport Saturday morning. But he had other Osaka plans with a family friend.


Since neither Matt nor I were super keen on paying 500yen for each little temple or rock garden we just visited one well known temple (and was underwhelmed, I think from all the packages bus tourists that clogged it up) and spent the rest of the day cruising the free parks and all the cool side streets and neighborhoods. What we decided is that there doesn't seem like a poor person or house in Kyoto and there are plenty of beautiful girls on bikes. Which is something that needs to spread through out the world.












Kyoto and and Osaka our about 40 minutes apart by train, but they seem like worlds apart. Kyoto is filled with temples, craft and art shops and green spaces. While Osaka is full of neon, shopping and concrete. But it's still charming in it's own way. We spent our last day here just walking around, eating some of the local food, like takoyaki, which are doughy balls with bits of octopus inside. And Okomanayaki, which is similar to an egg scramble with a bunch of veggies. For our evening entertainment, we started off with our usual bottle of Santori whiskey from 7-11 and a wander about town, looking for places to consume more alcohol. We found more huge buildings offering 75 rooms to spend 90 minutes "chatting with some ladies." Jake and Matt were cheap so we didn't do it...just kidding, Mom.
We did find some fun little bars, full of very drunk Japanese, but nothing earth shattering. We did notice an abundance of little "reggae" shops were selling little treats that we may have dabbled in, though.




I found where every cool vintage shirt in in America ends up, Osaka. For sale for 30 dollars.

No More Excuses

I've decided to get down to business and update the blog. The past two weeks I've made excuses to myself, such as: It's the first week of school and I have to plan lessons for the semester...but actually I don't plan lessons. Or I need to organize my photos. That actually took less than an hour to sort through them and put them on Facebook. And it took 30 minutes to pick the many photos I wanted to put on the blog. I like putting pictures on the blog and talking about them. It makes up for my sometimes poor and lazy story telling.

But now, today, Monday I really have no excuses. I pulled my quad playing ultimate frisbee yesterday. (Really showing my age I guess.) So I can't run or exercise, in fact I can barely walk. But right now there's no where to walk to, since Busan is being brushed by yet another typhoon. This packing 30 mile per hour winds, though it is quite wet outside. Therefore I am virtually trapped in my little apartment. But I plan on making the most of it by drinking a bottle of fine Korean Cabernet Sauvignon and telling a few brief stories about my travels in Mongolia.

Finishing with a Bang

On the last day of our 11 day trip our van...the Russian Winston as I called him , had a little accident. We were on the concrete- which is rare in Mongolia, and the tire decided to separate from the axle. This was a little bit of a problem since were traveling about 50 miles an hour. At the time I was day dreaming about the fresh kimchi and galbi bar-b-que I would be enjoying the next day back in Korea, so it scared everyone in the van to say the least. We had had no problems with Winston over the trip either.

Pretty much how it went down was like this: We're cruising down the road and the wheel comes off. There's a big bang and we immediately know something's wrong. The driver does a great job to keep the van under control as we slowly turned to the left and towards the left hand side of the road. Luckily no vehicles were coming the other way. But in Mongolia, there are rarely cars coming the other way. It was really like slow motion as we crossed the road and then went off it, down a little embankment and onto the grass and dirt. when we went off the tarmac, that's when we started to roll. Luckily we had slowed down enough that we only rolled once. There were 8 of is inside and we all got tossed around pretty good. But luckily we were all able to climb out the drivers door, then jump down from the van. There was a little gas leaking, so we grabbed all our belongings and got them away from the van too.

Since everyone was OK, atleast no broken bones or cuts. We were able to get back to Ulan Bator that evening. They have great cell phone coverage in Mongolia believe it or not, so we were able to call our guest house in UB. They organized a van from the nearest town to come pick us up. He was there in a couple hours to take us to our destination. Of course he drove like a maniac, but I figured what were the chances of crashing twice in one day. Plus I wanted to get back to UB so I could change my flight to get back home a little quicker.. Not that I didn't enjoy my time in Mongolia. But I didn't want to spend another 48 hours in the dirty, trafficky capitol city. And yes, I was lucky enough to get one of the last available seats on the Saturday afternoon flight...thanks Mongolian Airlines!

Back at the crash site our driver Auggie, worked his little tale off getting his van back on 4 wheels and doing everything possible to fix his little machine. I really hope he got it up and running and safely fixed. He seemed like a cool guy. Though he did take one of my 9 lives.

11 Days, 1 shower, 2 Frenchies, 1 van, 3 wheels, Infinite space and time.

To describe Mongolia I would 3 words: Big, Beautiful and Boring. That was my experience. Please don't take these as any sort of fact, they are just the opinion expressed by one tourist on a 2 week vacation. Which I think is why I was bored. I came from a place, Busan, South Korea, where I was going out almost every night, going to the beach and to bars and baseball games. Going hiking, riding my bike, playing volleyball. Sitting out in the street drinking cheap beer and eating cheap, tasty BBQ. I was having a great time when I left, and getting to Mongolia and traveling the country was a big change. If I did this trip 1 year ago I would have been in heaven...like a pig in shit. Then I was in the groove of traveling independently to out of the way places and seeking solitude. But now I am used to companionship and having a full social plate.

So yes, I did think Mongolia was beautiful and it is a country that still retains much of it's cultural identity. Just out in the countryside, be prepared to entertain yourself a bit, or get used to talking to the yaks.




Part of the reason I was so enthralled with Mongolia was the clouds. I'd see these photos of clouds that look like they are just lined up in the sky for you to jump from cloud to cloud. And they go on infinitely towards the horizon. Every sunny day looked like that in Mongolia. I'd just look out the window of our van towards the sky as we bumped along the bouncy road and say, "that's awesome."


Part of the little tour I joined was a 1 hour free camel ride. Yippee!! I've ridden 1 humped camels before for 3 days in India. That was not comfortable. But 2 humps wasn't too bad. You just plop down in between the humps and off you go. But as you'll notice, my camels humps were lacking. They just sagged over to one side and weren't very graceful.


Another exciting part of the tour I joined is that it came with 2 french people! Emily and Jeremy were their names. They are on a 10 month tour of Asia. In order to make a trip in Mongolia, you pretty much have to join a tour. I showed up on Sunday afternoon, met Jeremy and Emily on Sunday evening at the UB Guesthouse. I convinced them the Gobi desert was too hot and boring, they should take a tour of northern Mongolia with me. And they did. We left Tuesday morning with our van, guide, driver, meals and lodging, all for 42$ a day...not too bad I think.

They were nice enough and we talked about some of the same places we both traveled too. But they...or I should say Emily asked a lot of questions to the guide. Questions such as: "When can we make zee horse?" "Is it possible to make zee horse here." "We really want to make zee horse, we can make zee horse tomorrow, no?" They really wanted to GO ON A HORSEBACK RIDE as we say in UuuuMerca. We eventually did "make zee horse" a few days later and it brought one of them to tears.


Rounding out our Motley Crew was the guide and driver, Our drivers name was Auggie and our guides name is...I forget, that's how memorable she was. I won't mince words here. she was pretty crappy at her job after about day 3. And I know a thing or two about being a crappy trip leader, I used to be one. She gave us lots of good info the first few days and answered all the Frenchies questions politely, but after a few days it seemed she had to point out all the nice things she was doing for us and her tone of voice just seemed like anytime she spoke she was trying her hardest to be nice. It's hard to describe, but it was obvious she wasn't really digging us. I stayed cool till about the last 2 days. But by then her tone and attitude were getting pretty tough to handle. We figured any question we asked could be the one to send her over the handle bars into full meltdown. The Frenchies lost patience with her a few days earlier.



Every night we slept in a ger, the the traditional nomadic home of the Mongolian family, dating back to the days of Genghis Khan. They are very spacious inside, with room for 6 beds or so, a table and a stove. A more traditional ger that is actually lived in has more of a kitchen, and tables. For sleeping you roll your mattress on the ground. Now a days most gers have solar panels and satellite tv. and sometimes you can even get cell phone service if your ger is in the right spot.


Part of being a tourist was having one of our hosts come into our ger in the morning and make a fire. We were very thankful for that, since it would get down to freezing some of the nights. They would also make a fire in the evening. Most of our nights were spent in the ger, the 2 Frenchies and I, reading, playing cards, drinking vodka, drying our wet clothes, napping and staring at the ceiling.


Traditional robes, like the ones these gentleman are sporting are still very common in rural Mongolia. They are made of silk and called "deels."


Some of the traffic passing through a rural city at lunch time. It was heavier than normal this day. people from nearby villages had come to town for some traditional wrestling and horse racing. Unfortunately were on the tour and couldn't stick around for the festivities.


This is an example of a Mongolian toilet. it's hard to have plumbing when there's not much running water. They just dig a whole, put some boards over it and call it a squatter.


By now the tour has taken us up to it's northern terminus, before it returns back to UB. We are at Khosval Lake, a massive body of water, north of 50 degrees latitude and near the Russian border and Lake Baikal.

Up on the lake shore I came across these 4 men collecting downed wood. It was a very old school operation. They would drag the log near the truck, then cut it into smaller pieces with something they call a chainsaw, though it looked like nothing I'd ever seen. Then 3 guys would roll the log up 2 other diagonal logs used as a ramp. They filled their truck twice this way. I took a few photos, but the older fella started saying something in Mongolian, something like, "look at this punk foreigner with his camera. We're out here working our ass off and all he wants to do is take a picture." So I put down the camera and helped then load some logs for a few minutes. I was tired very quickly.





As I said earlier, we finally did, "make zee horse." and it was a memorable experience. We decided to make a 2 day trip up through the mountains and along the shoreline of Lake Khosval. in order to do this trip he had to hire a horse guide, as well as pack horse. Though the cost was minimal. The first day was pretty standard. We trotted and walked with our horses until we reached a nice ger camp on the lake. We hungout there and explored the lake front, relaxed and enjoyed the nice weather.

The return trip back was much more adventurous. We awoke to very threatening skies. It probably would have been a good idea to get an early start avoid as much of the rain as possible. But in Mongolia time as we know it doesn't really exist. There are no clocks and watches. People just go somewhere or do something when they feel the time is right. And for our guide the time wasn't right, or he wasn't drunk enough, I'm not sure. he spent the morning drinking Korean beer and fermented horse milk, called airag. By the time we departed at 11am there was a solid drizzle that would persist for the next 5 hours. 5 hours that we would spend on the back of a horse trekking up and down the hills that skirt the edge of Lake Khosval. By the 4th hour Emily was in tears. Her and Jeremy's fake North Face jackets from Nepal and China just weren't keeping them warm. She no longer wanted to "make zee horse." She wanted to be in her ger with a warm fire crackling, which was understandable. It wasn't a very fun ride. Our guide kept himself energized with an endless supply of Korean beer that he would pull out of his robe. I went into some sort of meditative haze where I wasn't cold, but I wasn't warm. i just told myself I wasn't uncomfortable, I wasn't tired and I wasn't hungry...and I wasn't French.


Mongolians are damn good basketball players. I see them playing all the time. They are better than Indians and Nepali's atleast, but not as skilled s the Chinese. Koreans are pretty good too lots of passing and teamwork, and no one is tall. Anyways, I hopped in and played 2 on 2 with these guys. The tall guy had moves like Hakeem Olajuwon. The rim was made of re-bar and tended to be a little bouncy. The court had a few pieces of yak dung on it that could mess up a bounce pass. But that didn't matter, they were still smiling and playing hard, and I had a great time playing with them. Basketball is still basketball, and we still had to put the round ball through the round hoop.


At the top of most hills you'll see Buddhist markings like this. They are religious. But they are also used in the old days as navigational points, before Russian jeeps and motorcycles. All the blue ribbons represent the sky. There were also a few bottles of vodka and horse skulls placed on the monument.


The next few photos are just a selection, or a basic representation of all the wide open beautiful landscapes that graced these eyes for 11 days. For days we drove through some of the longest, greenest most untouched lands I've ever seen. And the great thing is, that the majority of the time the land belongs to the people, the nomadic herder, the guy with a ger and few hundred goats and sheep. Rarely would we see a fence, and it was probably there to keep the animals out of their small little yard.

The best analogy I could come up with was this: Mongolia reminds me of Montana 150 years ago. (Not that I was ever there.) When the native people still roamed the land and chose what to do with it. It was a time before the USFS, NPS, BLM, DNR, WWF, EPA, barbed wire, and fashionable ranches for Billionaires. Mongolia is millions of acres of open land and sky. Free for people to roam and make a living off.







Mongolia is mainly Buddhist country, though it was banned when it was a communist country under the wing of the USSR. There were still temples and landmarks around the country from previous centuries. One of those temples was the Amarbayasgalant Monastery. (I won't be typing that word again.) It was built in the early 1700's. And it recently received an infusion of cash-probably from Richard Gere, as they are building new dormitories, a golden Buddha full of rice and a large white stupa. This large white stupa looks exactly like the Buddnhath Stupa in Kathmandu, by the way. This stupa, in Mongolia is up on a hill with an amazing view of the monastery and valley.

A quick little tangent, This valley was amazing. I set off on a little jog, towards the setting sun. I found a nice jeep/horse track that rolled along a river and took me deeper into the trees and meadows. I ended up running for 90 minutes and returning after sunset. The endorphins I felt made up for the sticky dirty feeling I had after not showering for 10 days.


Sometimes when a horse dies and it's a strong or special horse, the owner will cut off its head and leave on a hill top. There, the vultures and scavengers will pick its skull clean. This is called a sky burial and it is done only for the best horses.


Earlier in the tour we visited the Karakorum, (which means black rock in Mongolian and in Urdu, some how.) It is the former capitol of Mongol dynasty in the 13th century and of and on it's also been home to the Erdene Zuu Tibetan Monastary. Many meetings and battles have taken place in this area since the time of Gengis Khan. Between Mongols, Uigers, Chinese and smaller bands of ethnicities.

Now it's a tourist attraction with a few monks taking up residence as well. You can find them in the monastery spinning their prayer beads and chanting in Tibetan as they read the Kangyur, or Tibetan prayer book.



I hope you've enjoyed reading about my little journey. Mongolia is an amazing place, so large and vast. I didn't even get down to the Gobi Desert, or over to the high mountains in the west, or over to the rarely traveled to east.
If you want to see more pictures. I have some on my Flickr page, which you can get to at the top of this page.