Contrary to what every single person I've told so far has thought, Inner Mongolia is a province in China, and not just the inside of the country of Mongolia. But that doesn't make it any less alien or any less incredible.
I can't see the photos I posted here because that's just how Chinese internet rolls sometimes, but I hope you guys can...?
Last Saturday me and Eric--my Bowdoin travel buddy I acquired at the last minute--took an early morning sleeper train from Beijing to Hohhot (Huhaohete, if you're Chinese). The ride was about 11 hours, and was superior to flying in every single way.
I didn't know Eric at all before we left, since he's in a higher level Chinese than me. All I knew was that he liked the Red Sox and books, and I figured that was good enough. We ended up getting along smashingly. He shared my philosophy that any weird or frustrating shit that went down during travel was all just part of the adventure. I never thought I'd meet anyone whose company I could not only stand for a solid week of 24/7 togetherness and Mongolians but could thoroughly enjoy. I think this means we should get married, but that's another story.
My parents were so nervous about my Mongolian exploits that they encouraged me to stay at a really nice hotel and footed the bill. We haphazardly picked the Inner Mongolia Hotel off Expedia.com since it looked nice. As it turns out, 70USD a night will get you an awful lot in Inner Mongolia in late October.
We didn't actually go to Hohhot with any solid plans, so we spent our four days there mostly exploring and figuring out what to do next. Our hotel had the only map of Hohhot in all of China with any English on it, but it was outdated, so we had a lot of fun chasing nonexistant cashmere markets and foreign language bookstores around the city. At least five of the places we looked for had moved or were no longer there, sparking a running joke about what happens when Mongolian nomads build cities. We went to a brand new museum that looked like an airport and saw dinosaurs and CCP propaganda. We ate burgers and fries at a shameless Mongolian rip-off of McDonalds and donuts and naan in Hohhot's thriving Muslim section. The drivers were even crazier than those in Beijing, and we nearly died in buses with no brakes (it's your stop, jump!) and taxis that drove the wrong way down the road. We ate a ridiculous amount of meat, including donkey. We drank no milk but drank milk-tea, milk-beer, and milk-liquor.
Mongolians eat a lot of meat and drink a lot of hard liquor, and they deeply appreciate Genghis Khan and two-humped camels. Basically, I felt at home.
On our entire trip, we encountered no other white people, and no one else who could speak more than a few phrases in English. From the Mongolians' reactions, it was clear some of them had never seen a waiguoren. Every time we left our hotel room we attracted stares and double-takes; hundreds of times a day we were greeted with loud bursts of English out of nowhere--"Hellooo!" "Good morning!" "What is my name?" Shop owners told us we were beautiful and stylish (we were wearing stained college hoodies at the time). Another asked why we weren't fat ("We're not Southern," we told her). At a hotpot restaurant, a trio of drunk Mongolians shook our hands and rambled for fifteen minutes on how wonderful America was. Many people asked if we were Russian. A gaggle of little children yelling "Hello! Laowai! Laowai!" mobbed us in a clothing bazaar and only ran away when Eric threatened to take photos of them. At one point we were chased for three blocks by some lunatic lady in blue sunglasses and only eluded her by leaping into a bank and hiding behind the stone pillars for ten minutes.
Eric and I enjoyed using our opportunity to form their impression of Americans by telling them that people from New England were the smartest, "Hafo" University and "Kerby" Bryant were overrated, and that anyone who voted for McCain was an idiot who didn't believe in science.
After a few days basking in the lovely multicolored glow of neon-obsessed Hohhot, Eric and I decided to head out into the boonies. We Googled a few places on the map, picked some place called Xilinhot, and bought tickets. An incredibly uncomfortable 11 hour overnight train ride was made more bearable by getting so drunk off naijiu that watching Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on Eric's iPod became high entertainment. When we got into Xilinhot some time around 8 in the morning, exhausted and stunned senseless by the Siberan winds, a taxi driver herded us into her car, drove us around while she ran an errand, and finally dumped us at a bingguan (the Chinese term for a really shitty hotel). Needless to say, our new bingguan wasn't exactly the Inner Mongolia Hotel.
There was no hot water, Eric got locked in the bathroom, the pillows were sandbags (no, literally, they were sandbags), and the only channels the TV got were Chinese movies dubbed in Mongolian and really, really bad anime--but hey, we were in Xilinhot! For a good time, I encourage you guys to look up where Xilinhot is. It's pretty out there.
We went for a walk. It was fucking freezing. I don't mean it was coooold like the wimps in Beijing complain. It was two-hardened-New-Englanders-want-to-fucking-die cold. All the locals kept asking us why on earth we'd decided to travel to Inner Mongolia in late October. I called my parents later and got the weather report from my dad--about 6 degrees F with 30+ mph winds. Xilinhot is open grasslands with a few low buildings, so those winds will just about knock you over. But whatever, we're lihai de laowai, mei wenti!
Summer is the tourist season in Inner Mongolia, so all the usual tourist traps were closed during our trip. This meant that while we had a more independent, somewhat more authentic experience, we didn't get to do some of the fun things like sleeping in a yurt or riding camels. However, since no one was around, we got to crawl around old temples and aobaos. All alone in the cold, it was unearthly.
On our second day in Xilinhot it was time to see the grasslands. We had told the bingguan that we were interested in having someone drive us out to the grasslands, so early the next morning a middle-aged Chinese man burst into our room (so much for the lock) and started shouting about travelling. Much confusion and discussion later, the driver brought us out to a ranch. The ranch was closed for the season, but the workers agreed to let us, their "American friends," have a look around.
It was freezing. The grass was dead. It was beautiful.
And there were camels...
...and reindeer, horses, cows, eagles, chickens, pheasants, fucking wolves, sheep, and PUPPIES.
After a yummy Mongolian meal in a yurt--probably the only meal I've ever eaten wearing a hat, scarf, coat, and gloves--we headed back to the bingguan and thanked our longsuffering cabbie with a bottle of naijiu. That night we took a "sleeper bus" back to Beijing. Did you know they made busses with bunk beds? Neither did I. Of all our transportation adventures, this was definitely the most comfortable, although I did yarf around one in the morning. It turns out dirt roads, Chinese drivers, lying down, Pringles, and swigging hard liquor out of a camel-shaped flask do not mix.
And that's that. In other news, I voted for the first time. I spent almost 200RMB (about 30 USD) mailing the damn thing in so it can be tossed in the pile of other Absentee Ballots to be ignored, and I live in Massachusetts anyway, so it really didn't matter if I voted or not--but I VOTED, dammit, for the muthafuckin PRESIDENT.
I also bought a bootleg DVD of the 'Dark Knight' that for some inexplicable reason is labelled on the back as "Butterfly on a Wheel."
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