First Impressions of Russia> Travels

Based on a 19 hour ride on a Russian crewed train and about 6 hours in Irkutsk, here are my initial impressions of Russia:

The conductors on the train were all robust women who behaved like angry scolding mothers. They didn't speak any English and when you would try to communicate with them they would either ignore you or yell at you. The border crossing took about 5 hours, which seemed like a lot of time to me. During this time you are locked on a stopped train. The air conditioning is turned off and the bathrooms are also locked, making for a pretty rough time. So my first impression, "Get it together Russia!"

There was a Russian guy on our train that was incredibly drunk. By incredible I mean he was fall down drunk, but like for the entire trip without passing out. He would just roam the corridor falling down every once and a while, generally creeping everybody out.

Once I got off the train I met a quick succession of helpful, kind Russians that seemed to be sober. That said, there seem to be lots of people clearly drunk during day light hours. In China I took a series of photos of people sleeping on the job. Here I am going to try to find people drunk on the job.

The store owners here don't trust the shoppers as far as they can throw them, leading me to believe that shoplifting runs rampant. I went into a Supermarket to pick up some snacks and I had to lock my backpack in a locker at the door. Once inside I encountered what could best be described as a very disorganized sting operation. There were employees all over the place, communicating with headsets, eyeing everybody suspiciously.

The fire escapes on the buildings are shoddy at best. There, I've said it.

Either the women here like to wear tight clothing or the top down Soviet style of sizing clothes has gone terribly wrong...with mixed results running the gamut of jaw dropping to uncontrollable spasms of cringing.

I think, and don't hold me to this, they smell worse than Czech people.

If bad haircuts were bees, Russia would be the worlds leading exporter AND importer of honey. Bad economics you say?

So I guess my first impressions are a bit negative, but perhaps this place will grow on me, and I will grow on this place, like a certain aging boxer from the fighting streets of Philadelphia. Hopefully Russia will not crush me. (And if you didn't think I was going to throw in any Rocky 4 references, you don't know me well enough. Right, I am off to bench press some Horses.)

The Flying Yurt> Travels

I just got back from 4 days/3 nights in the countryside of Mongolia. I went there with a program called Ger to Ger. It's a non profit and they have helped organize some nomadic Mongolian families to play host to travelers. I traveled there with Kyra, a top notch Singaporean girl I met on the train from Beijing to UB. On Friday morning we took a local bus about 2 hours to get dropped off at a golf course in the middle of nowhere. Yes, we were certainly into the wild, or at least soon to be. There our first host met us, riding up on Ox-cart, or technically Yak-cart and we took a 10 minute ride to his family's Ger.
You may be asking yourself what's a Ger. Well a Ger is the Mongolian word for a Yurt and a Yurt is a round, white felt covered one room home, somewhere between a tepee and a circus tent. The size of the inside would go for about 1500 dollars a month on the Lower East Side in NYC. So in other words it is pretty damn small. You should expect to find in this small space: Two rusty army cot beds. One or two beat-up suitcases filled with clothes from the Gap and various major league baseball teams, circa 1986. One Buddhist shrine laid on the top of a highly decorated wooden cabinet. Another highly decorated wooden cabinet with a mirror and many photos of the family pasted to the sides. (All Gers have a least one photo of everybody on horse back and one photo of a family trip to UB with everyone standing in front of the ugly communist era Capital building.) A stove in the middle of the Ger with a long chimney poking out of the roof. (The stove is taken outside during the day so as not to overheat the Ger in the Summer.) Several horse back riding trophies proudly displayed. Lots of unrecognizable animal meat hanging from the ceiling to dry. Oh, AND like 10 people. Not even extended family. Everybody seems to have 8 or more siblings. If you have ever wanted to get to know your family, become Mongolian.

These Gers sit in indescribablely beautiful valley's set in lush green rolling hills and mountains with a nearby stream always within earshot. There, cows, yaks, horses, sheep and goat graze, being guarded from wolves by several family dogs, which I am told are trained to be just on the edge of homicidal. In the distance are a few other gers, often belonging to the same family. At night this valley will be filled with more stars than anyone would hope or want to count.

Kyra and I camped in three different valley's with our tent next to the Ger's of three different families participating in the Ger to Ger program. Some highlights of the trip:

Getting outside of the tent in the middle of the night to take a piss and finding the silhouette of a very large Yak standing in front of my tent opening. "Move along Yak, nothing to see here."

We went on horseback for over 20k from the Ger we were staying at on the first night to our next ger. I have only ridden a horse twice before and both time for less than an hour. This horse ride took about 4 hours. My balls hate me so much. I think my kids are going to be Mongoloids. How fitting. The two most exciting moment of the ride were when the back of my saddle became unbuckled while at a fast canter and I managed to slide up onto the base of the horse's neck and pull the rains. Did I mention the whole time we were riding we had no helmets. While I cheated death, one gopher/prairie dog was not so lucky. Again, at a fast canter, I was looking down while riding and I noticed a small grassland creature look up in horror just before my horse stepped on him. Kyra told me she heard a terrible squeaking noise from behind.

Working on my screenplay for my first feature film, "The Flying Yurt." Just you wait, it's going to be a homeless man's "The Sound of Music."

We took an Ox cart the following day to the next yurt, about 10k away. Our host from the previous night gave me the rains and I steered the ox there pretty much the whole way. Like most children raised in the 80's and 90's, I had plenty of theoretical experience having played hours and hours on Ox cart simulator games. On the game you could you use different kinds of beasts of burden in different numbers and colors and do up your cart rig in about 5 different set ups. You could also choose your location, The Wild West, The Silk Road, Newark and of course my favorite, Outer Space. Steering an Ox in zero G is a lot different then being in Mongolia dealing with the real thing.

At another Ger we played a game where you roll the ankle bones of goats and then flick them at each other with your finger depending on which side they end up on. I was the big winner, crushing Kyra and a six year old child. The buzz of my victory reverberated throughout the whole valley. I think that this may be my calling and I plan on giving up consulting for a year and concentrate on my training so I can take next year's Naadam festival by surprise. I feel with Western training facilities, better diet, finger exercises and the use of wind tunnels I can be the very the best. We tried to purchase a set of 20 ankle bones from the ger owners but they seemed to be a valuable family heirloom. That night under the cloak of darkness I snook up on four goats, clubbed them over the head and now they are walking on stumps. I still need four more so I plan on going through the trash here in UB until I come upon a discarded goat carcass. Wish me luck!

I left Kyra yesterday as her Russian Visa starts two days behind mine and she is spending two more nights in the National park. We plan on meeting up in Russia in a few days. I took a horse cart ride to the nearest road. All the while my driver, a 15 year old sheep herder, was listening to my ipod. He is now all about The Beta Band. Once on the road I began waiting for a bus that wasn't to come for another three hours. Luckily I managed to hitch a ride back into to town with a Mongolian sports writer and his family. He spoke English well and we chatted about the NFL and NBA. When we got into UB his brother, an older man named Gelenkhuu, who doesn't speak English, invited me to stay the night with his family. I accepted this generous offer and after dropping off some camping equipment and finding my lost ATM card I went to their home for dinner. With dinner we drank many shots of Mongolian vodka. Gelenkhuu would make very long speeches in Mongolian, which while I couldn't understand,but almost brought tears to my eyes for their beauty. His daughter would translate and say that I was the first American he has had in his home and he was very happy to have me there. One note on Mongolian vodka: When you are chasing vodka with a mug full of fermented horse milk, your head is in big trouble. Big trouble. On that note, I am off to Russia today. I'll try to post in the next few days.

Mongolia> Travels

OK, so I am finally out of China, so I can access my blog now. Thanks for looking after the dog Pink Wizard, but did you have to let him crap all over the carpet, and toilet seat? Right, I'm in a bit of a rush so I will make this quick. The train ride from Beijing to Ulan Bator was pretty cool. Mostly played cards and tried to learn Mongolian. Sain Times! Ulan Bator is also nice. These Mongolians are tough. I saw some guy getting strangled on the street by a meter maid. Some other guy explained to me that the guy was parked illegally. So that is what a Mongolian parking ticket looks like. I am heading into the wild tomorrow morning for some horse riding, camping and Gerring. www.gertoger.com. 5 steps to becoming a nomad. It's not a tour really, just some gers that know I am coming and will make sure their dogs don't attack me.

Final Thoughts on China> Travels

I am back now in Beijing after a few days in Shanhaiguan. Some updates:

While playing cards on the train to Shanhaiguen I realized that I only had about 300 yuan, about 30 euro, on me. Even in cheap China that isn't enough for two days. Long story short, I got a cab to the two hotels in town that accept foreigners. Unfortunately Visa wasn't everywhere I wanted them to be as they did not accept plastic at either. I then asked the taxi driver to take me to the bank of china. He did, but sadly they, nor any other bank in this town had an ATM. They informed me at the bank that I would have to go to the closest city, Qinhuangdao, to get some. Just another travel headache. The funny thing is last night I dug out my Japan and Korea guides, that I was going to give to some other travelers I met who will be going that way. When flipping through the book I found 1100 Yuan, or about 130 dollars, which had been stuffed there for two weeks now. I actually came back to Beijing early because i was running out of money. Anyway, just further proof that I am not all that bright. (You were wrong Mom.)

After checking into a hotel I rented a bicycle and cycled around town. (Of course with no bicycle helmet. I have yet to see one and with the regular occurrence of failing brakes I reckon one might come in handy at some point.) This was the smallest town I went to while in China and I was once again the only white guy around. When I wrote that blog entry about playing cards there were 7 locals stareing over my shoulder at every word. It was weird.

The reason I had come to Shanhaiguan was to see the start of the great wall and do some hiking. The next morning when I woke up I went to asection called, Jiaoshan. The first bit, a steep ascent, had been thoroughly restored and was swarmed by Chinese tourists. Still no white people to be seen. Quickly though the wall petered out to ruins and then to breadcrumb trails of rocks. I spent two hours following this trail, which had lots of rock climbing sections that scared the crap out of me. I was alone and there wasn't any set trail so i think it would have been a while before someone stumbled upon my rotting broken carcass. When I got to the top of a mountain that the crumbled wall had snaked up, I gave a shout of "New Jersey!" (Can you tell I have no love in my life?) I found that my voice echoed pretty loudly across the valleys. I figured if I broke a leg I could shout for help, but nobody would understand that. I had my Chinese phrasebook on hand so I guess I could have said "help", "Jiuming A!", but it is so hard to pronounce Chinese words correctly that this would probably come out as meaning "wheel burrow", "Leprechaun" or "I want postcards," which would have certainly brought some help come to think of it. Anyway, I made it back alive, although very sweaty.

The next day I went to the section of the wall called the old dragonhead. This is where the Great Wall starts, rising from the Bohai Gulf. This picture actually shows a view from the start of the wall.
Again, lots of Chinese tourists, all of whom wanted to take a picture with me. Chinese tourists travel in packs with matching hats. The matchinghats can be very useful in sorting out your friends and foes in aknife fight or bilingual bloodfest. In this picture I got them to all yell "SpringBreak" instead of cheese. This of course sounded more like "Spling Bleak" which I imagine would be a lot of fun. It started raining while I was there and then it started pouring. Blah blah blah, my clothes got wet. I saved you about 5 minutes of your life there.

On my train back to Beijing I met a Chinese girl in her 20's who wasreading a magazine meant to practice one's English. The articles were all about Madonna and Huey Lewis and the News. I showed her my guidebook and phrase book and she spent the next 5 hours copying down all of the vocabulary she could. The only word she asked me about was Chrysanthemum. She tried to pronounce it about 20 times, but to no avail. I told her that it doesn't come up much in conversation unless you work in the flower or tea business. I was so impressed with the energy she put into studying my books that I offered to give her my Chinese phrasebook, which I had received earlier from a friendly Canadian leaving China. She happily accepted the book and explained that they do not sell them in China. This could be the public relations revelation that that US so badly needed.

So now I am back in Beijing. I actually was not allowed to stay in my previous hotel because my passport was at the police office for the visa extension and the temp paper they gave me had apparently expired. Thanks again Prague Chinese Embassy for the 23 day visa that started all these problems. I hate you so very much. I picked it up this morning after a long wait in line and fortunately had no problems.

In China one thing you will notice is there are no large dogs. At first I thought that this was because they ate the larger ones because they were meaty, but apparently this country has a small dog policy to go along with the one child policy. Kids actually go the zoo to see larger dogs. On a side note I believe there is an ugly dog policy too.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a eyeglass's store and thought I could pickup a new pair to replace my old beat up, out of prescription ones. I found a great looking pair that at first I thought were "Silhouettes", a luxury brand that costs a bundle in the US. Upon closer inspection I realized they were knock-off "Sandwich" brand glasses. It is written in the same exact script that Silhouette uses so it was hard to tell the difference. Why they thought Sandwich was a sexy substitute beats me. A woman took my prescription the old fashioned way by puttingd ifferent pieces of glass in front of my eyes and asking me better or worse. Two hours later my glasses were ready. I put them on and things looked a bit funny, but I just figured my eyes needed to adjust. It took me about 20 minutes to put my finger on just what was funny about them. Everything I looked at was curved. It was like looking through a wide angle lens. I walked back and tried to explain the problem. The glass on glasses was thin on the nose sides and very thick where the frame met the glass, which I believe was the cause of the curving. After a protracted negotiation they took my prescription again and an hour later they had a new pair of glasses, which still had the same thin/thick problem and when I put them on had the same distortion. They ended up giving me a discount. Advice: Do not buy anything China that costs more than 50 dollars.

I wore them a bit more and I have a theory that they are in fact allowing me to see the curve of space/time. If this is the case I suppose I have gotten a great deal. While this is kind of cool, the novelty wears off pretty quickly. I am going to have an optometrist friend back home take a look at them for me and see what she thinks. I guess I will also drop them by a physicist friend too.

So that's it for China. Tomorrow morning I will get on an overnighttrain to Ulan Batur, the Capital of Mongolia. Once there I should beable to access blogspot again and will post up my own stuff instead ofrelying on the pink wizard. I haven't been able to check what's onthere since I left Korea. I hope he didn't post anything dealing withbathroom humor. He has a tendency towards that.

This blog has been hijacked > from the Pink Wizard

I decided that in Larry's absence -- continuing through his return -- I will take over his blog. I will blog about whatever I want. And I want to blog about what I eat -- so stay tuned, and I will update this blog and tell you what I have eaten. I used to do this on my own blog, but like the New York Times, I lost all my readers.

Breakfast:

I skipped breakfast this morning, which is unusual for me.

Lunch:

Went to Simmons, a soul food joint here in Charlotte, NC. It is frequented by African-American B and C-list celebrities who post their autographed pictures on the wall. I sat next to an autographed picture of 2 Live Crew.

I had ribs, green beans, mashed potatoes and cornbread. I drank water.

Dinner:

A hard-boiled egg and a smoothie made from cranberry juice and frozen fruit.
Miscellaneous ingestions:

And by the way -- why do people still write checks at the supermarket? All banks give their customers debit cards, which are the exact same thing as checks only they don't take a half hour to fill out. I can understand if one is not adept at technology, but come on, its not hard to slide a card through a card-reader. A monkey could do that.

Great? No, the Greatest!> Travels

Over the past two thousand years millions of Chinese people were involved in a seemingly never ending building project. A grandfather, father and grandson would labor next to one another on a structure that had and would become the life's work of their ancestors and descendants. They were building a wall, a Great Wall. When the grandfather was asked by his grandson, :"Why do we toil in the hot sun building this wall?" the grandfather might have had the foresite toa nswer: "One day people from all over the world will come to this wall that we have built. They will enjoy the scenery and purchase postcards, t-shirt and beverages from our descendants. This will be our legacy."

The GWC was never particularly effective at keeping out invading armies. Kublai Khan simply bribed one of the gate guards to let his whole army through. It's most useful function happens to be getting tourists to come by the busload and buy things that say they had come there.

Reading this blog I am sure you can tell much of what I have seen on this Asia trip has been between underwhelming and somewhat interesting. I spent yesterday hiking 10 kilometers up and down a section of the Great Wall and it was just about the greatest thing I have ever seen. Better than the NJ turnpike and Garden state parkway combined. Combined! As you've seen in pictures, the wall snakes along hills and is plenty wide enough to walk on top. The section where I went was only partially restored and not frequently visited by tourists, unlike Badeling, a section mobbed by tourists and apparently so restored it looks like new. No, this section was crumbly and ruiny and in that way that adjectives and adverbs fail to describe. Kind of like Clint Eastwood in the form of a wall. The comic relief on my hike was provided by the postcard saleswomen, spread along the wall almost like sentries. They would ask you in very broken English whether you would like to buy souvenirs, that they carried in large shopping bags. The thing is they would follow you, informing you that you could by later. Like 4 hours later. That's commitment considering the wall is a pretty strenuous climb. At first we (I was traveling with two American girls) would shake them off by explaining that we weren't going to buy postcards. This isn't as easy as you might think. For instance, we found if you say "Postcard" three times in a row, one will appear seemingly out of nowhere. All the while walking along you half expected them to come up, climbing up bothsides of the wall, a pack of postcards clenched in their teeth.

I have spent the past few days in Beijing, visiting the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Tian'anmen Square and the Lama temple. None really wowed me all that much, despite their significant sizes. Last night I watched the world cup final in my hostel's bar with a pretty large crowd of backpackers. The game was pretty boring other than Zinedene Zidane headbutting that guy in the chest. Right, so thats it for now.

Fun With Larry's Identity at the Xianxianxian Hotel> Angelo

Guttenshmeltzen!

This is Angelo Vandergluten, Larry's Dutch friend. I met Larry in China. We had good times together. Very erotic at times and not at all awkward.

But I needed money. So I stole Larry's wallet and left him in China to fend for himself.

I am now in the Chinese City of Xianxianxian where fortunately for me, and unfortunately for Larry, they take Visa. I am staying at the luxury hotel called the "Xianxianxian Luxury Hotel."
Below is a picture of my room.

Using Larry's credit card, I then took a subterranean rickshaw to Jianjianjian -- the fashion capital of China -- the Chinese Paris (if you will). I went to a fashion show and saw the latest of what's HOT in China. Here's a picture from the event:

Then I went out to eat in China's fanciest restaurant "McXianjian's." It was awesome. I wish Larry was there with me. I snapped a photo of the main course: "xiandudu." It was like shrimp, but crunchier.

That's all for now. Auf Vanderpooten!

This Blog Post Dedicated to the Woman With Tire Marks Down Her Back >Larry

Piece of advice: Always check the brakes when you rent a bike (or for that matter motorcycles, cars and pottery wheels too). I was peddling down a sidewalk in Xi'an, winding my way through umbrella wielding pedestrians when a women jukes to the left, directly in the path of my bike. I quickly flexed the hand brake on the bicycle, but instead of a sharp reduction in speed I got a sharp snapping sound. This blog entry is dedicated to that women, whoever she was. Actually I dodged her by a hair, but the rest of the day I had to drive on the bustling, lawless streets of Xi'an with no brakes, reducing me to Flintstone style feet breaking.

While in Xian I took a bike ride along the 17 kilometer wall encircling the city. This was the biggest city in the world 2000 years ago and from the area inside the wall I can see why. Also while in Xi'an I saw the Terracotta warriors, many thousands of human size clay warriors that were created to guard the tomb of China's first emperor. They were discovered in 1974 by some peasants digging a well after standing underground undisturbed for over 2,000 years. They have only uncovered a thousand or so of the warriors for fear of exposing them to the elements, which are just a small fraction of the army. Each sculpture has a unique face and were discovered fully armed with weapons still sharp enough to cut a cantaloupe. I'll be honest; I was a little underwhelmed by the site. I guess I was expecting more of them. Or maybe it was the airplane hanger that covers them, crowded with large Chinese tour groups that took away from the atmosphere.

This morning I arrived in Beijing after a relatively comfortable ride in business class from Chengdu. I found out that you don't have to beat anyone up to avoid becoming someone's bitch. That's for prison. Lesson learned. I picked up my ATM card from a friend's friend here in Beijing and hopefully tonight I will be able to draw money out for the first time since my wallet was stolen. I also applied to get an extension on my visa. If you remember I was granted a 23 day visa to China, the first one of its kind as I am informed from the people at the visa extension bureau. They only give them out for 30, 60 and 90 days. Lucky me. 23 is an auspicious number in China, and sports. Unfortunately I need 26 days so I get to pay 20 dollars for some Chinese bureaucrats mishandling of my paperwork. OK, venting over.