Beijing

It was the best night train ever on the way into Beijing. 
1) They have to jack the train and put it on new wheels at the border.
2) We had been meeting people on tours and hostels so already had our train friends lined up, then the next door couple came and recruited us.
3) I'm being actively interested in my messenger conversations lately.
4) World's coolest couple started an absinthe party in the dining car.  He's a documentary filmmaker who specializes in trains.  She runs an absinthe museum.  Party started. 

So it was this orgy of stimulation with cool stuff happening on all sides of me. 

We rolled into Beijing in the morning into cutest little guesthouse ever featuring super sweet 5 star concierge man. 

In Beijing I was most interested in the art, which was pretty disappointing.  I mean pretty amateur stuff which surprised me because I thought the traveling exhibitions featuring contemporary Chinese work were really great. 

That was one of our days but we discovered some awesome little areas.  First there's like every little street.

There are so many streets you couldn't take a car down.  The answer?  Everyone has a little modded out scooter with like a tiny car body built around it to varying levels of professionalism.  Jes thought they were all art cars waiting to happen and some of them seriously an led light string away from seeing them at a festival. 

We hung out in Tienanmen twice on one day, seeing the flag lowering ceremony.  It was weird to see it as a place unhinged from all I know of it. 

We also did the summer palace, the temple of heaven and the forbidden city, as well as jinshein park.  The park and the summer palace both have high manmade hills to climb up with views of the city. 

All the buildings are very splendid old Beijing, lots of fitted wood no nail construction with beautifully refreshed paint jobs.  Similar kind of Buddhist construction to a lot of southeast Asian temples, but different decorative elements. 

There's a million locals at a lot of these sights which is cool.  Summer palace had marble boats and ferries to an island in the water and big lovely palaces in the middle and the hill to climb and you could look out over the skiffs on the water. 

Our favorite restaurant district was also around a pond thing which had waist high water lilies in it and people would swim (gross!) and boat and people really fly kites.  Little kites and grown people. 

It was really lovely and there was a lot of nonstop wandering around and looking at stuff. 

Haiku Written on the Great Wall at Dawn

The limitless haze unfolds
Mountains behind mountains fade in purple beyond.
Behind the sun hides

Feet in the dust which crumbles
Bones of an ancient wall dying ever slowly
My back against stone

My guide says the winds don't stop
And at the crest of the mountain ridge, on my face.
The wind never stops

Walk along the cool morning
March with the crenellated sentinels to see
The desolate sun

Ulaan Bataar

Asian influence has hit in Mongolia so the food has some rad asian elements. It definitely reads more asian than russian for example, in how people look, in the Buddhist (with Hindu influence I think) temples, in architecture (it spent some time as a Chinese protectorate).

In Ulaan Bataar we decided that Mongolia is ground zero of the zombie apocolypse. We are staying in an apartment that is above a medical clinic. Good spot to take out the first floor stairs and have a supply of meds and a clinic/ prep and storage facility. The doors were incredible. The one in our apartment had a metal door, triple bolted with entirely mechanical locks, with get this a little flap that opened to a guard that had a hole just large enough to shoot a bolt action crossbow out of if there was a zombie at your door.

There are just a lot of abandoned playgrounds with one sad metal slide in them and that sort of thing, that make you feel like you did just wake up in 28 days later.

But the people of Ulaan Baatar is like a whole nation of people on a first date. Everywhere you go there are couples of dressed up adorable kids holding hands, sharing a soda etc. It's a real weird contrast to the post apocalyptic feel of the surrounds. But I think these guys will band together into plucky bands of survivors pretty quickly.

We hadn't seen any movies since we left the US because language barriers so we went nuts at the IMAX. I got to see Star Trek, Independence Day 2, Nerve (this was all the same week so we were scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point) and Suicide Squad (the next week when we got back from our tour).

Structure was 3 days UB, then 5 days ger camp, 1 day in cottage by tour operator, 7 day tour, 2 days UB.

We ran all our touring through Minjin, a woman we found on couchsurfers.com. After our 3 apartment nights we stayed in her guesthouse, her family cottage and she took us out to find the ger camp and organised the tour so it worked out well with transfers and stuff.

It was also a big help because I was freaking pretty bad on money, feeling out again only a month after Jeremy had bailed me out. Jes and I did a lot of math and discovered she had some money built up since May. We also wound up working with Minjin because she had prices about 2/3 what the other operators we looked at had. So we wound up figuring we could make it through these two weeks on the money we actually had and then work through my salary, probably surviving the month. By then we'll be in Japan, that's a problem for future Maile.

The national museum had a small collection, couple of hours max but it was very quality for what mongolia has. Ancient deer stones, traditional mongolian clothes (so elaborate and cool, I think they ripped Queen Amadala's wardrobe off of this stuff) Gers and their furnishings, and some stuff from Genghis Khan (Actually Chiinghis haan) era, including some cool clothes, armour, weapons and horse tack from centuries ago. So some really cool artifacts, limited in scope and period, but really good for the significant parts of mongolia.  

Transiberian sex toys and why not?

Well at least it's something different from what they've got in every other airport.

I said goodbye to Russia, toasting the birch trees with straight vodka in my hand and straight beauty in my heart. 

The landscape changed as we crossed the border, heartbreaking to be saying goodbye and inspiring to be seeing the craggy rocks and grasslands yurts (Gers here) dotting the fields.  Real mountains appearing.

On the border there was some passport confusion.  I entered Russia on my Australian passport and needed to enter Mongolia on my US one.  Mongolia has no visa requirements for USAians.  But apparently has recently instituted them for other places due to poor performance for them at the ASIAN conference.

So anywho I had a brief discussion in point with the border official
Hmm your passport doesn't have an exit stamp from Russia
Oh that's okay it's in this passport
Oh ok I'll just stamp this passport then
No you want to stamp this passport
I don't think I do
No really

So I get across the visa thing and she goes away, and comes back some time later.  I am at this point in bed.  Which means I have no bra or shoes on.  She asks me to come with her and I do, thinking we're going to another car.

So we exit the train.  She points at my feet.  I shrug.  I was in bed yo but it's no good going back now.  So we go to some office about 6 train cars up from mine in the train station and she talks the guy through my predicament and he basically says he doesn't want the paperwork and he'll stamp my US. 

None of these convos are had in English mind.  So she sends me back out.  The train is starting to make those exhaust releasing about to go noises. I fast walk towards my car contemplating that while I don't have any money or you know underwear I am clutching a passport so that will come in handy if I'm left at the border.  I try to get in the car before mine.  It's locked.  I try to get in my car.  The stairs aren't down but there's a soldier there who pulls me up onto the train.  It goes within 5 minutes.  Jes is poking her head out looking for me.

We coast into the Mongolian night and in the morning the landscape has all changed.  We are somewhere else.