Chapter 11 - Quilted Ulaanbaatar 800 years after the great Khan
Where we talk about "border torture" and explore the city of Ulaanbaatar as it prepares for a historic celebration of the Mongolian Empire
Border Torture
Sukhbaatar, Mongolia. Saturday, 08 July 2006
I know now that I would cave if someone asked me to reveal secrets under interrogation. This realization came after I was subjected to a specific type of torture.
The train pulled into the Russian border post between Siberia and Mongolia at 1 p.m., and we left at 6 p.m. You ask, what did they do in all that time? Did they question us? Did they search us? No—nothing, nada, niet. We wandered around the train for three hours, and finally, in the fourth hour, as we began to despair, the border officials boarded the train and took our passports. Two hours later, I could see them all standing outside smoking, talking, and chatting while we were wasting away inside the train. My suspicion was that they were waiting for the train timetable to match the appointed hour—I can only imagine they have a bell inside the customs office. Finally, the guards handed back our passports and waved us on.
For those preparing to go on this trip, go to the bathroom before the border stop and drink sparingly during, because the toilets were locked for the entire duration.
Once formalities were concluded, the landscape again began to roll by, and we crossed the electrified fence at the Russian-Mongolian border. The good thing in all this is that the so-called currency scam did not happen. I had been warned that in years past, if you did not have the previous currency declaration form (given to you when you entered, which I didn’t), the border guards might confiscate any foreign currency. I hope and suspect that this scam no longer occurs, and certainly it did not happen to me.
You say, “Woo hoo, Dups is free!” but oh no, not so.
Now we are in Sukhbaatar on the Mongolian side, stuck again on the train. The officials have our passports, again. There are armed guards on every corner of the train. I can only guess they are making hand-drawn facsimiles of our passports.
Border torture indeed.
Crash
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Sunday - Monday, 09–10 July 2006 (Sunday)
After arriving in Ulaanbaatar, I fought my way through the throng of locals vying for travelers’ attention, trying to sell them on hotels, hostels, inns, taxis, and whatnot. I went off to find the hotel I’d been instructed to go to by Intrepid. So there I was, still half-filled with vodka, walking alone into the city, armed with only my guidebook and an address.
I should probably explain that at this point I wasn’t feeling my best. I was tired and suffering from a slight headache. To explain why I was in such a state, I need to wrap up the border torture story from yesterday. As that ordeal wound down, I decided it was time to open the vodka. Sorry, Chris and Lisa—I had planned to save some of that vodka for you in Shanghai, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Yannis was worried it might be illegal to drink, but I personally didn’t care, so we poured the vodka into a water bottle and shared it from there.
During this vodka-fueled respite, I met two of the girls from our carriage. Verity, from Brisbane, was traveling with her parents and younger sister. She’s an economics/law student at uni and may attend the World Debating Championships in Vancouver, BC. The other girl, Marina, is Russian, and to my surprise, she wasn’t 16 years old as I had assumed, but rather a much older engineering student from Irkutsk. She could understand my accent but had trouble with Verity’s fast-paced speech.
Regardless, the first bottle vanished quickly. Then we joined some British youngsters in another carriage—James, Hannah, and Tamsin—who were all traveling before starting uni in the fall. By midnight, Yannis was quite drunk, and we had to pour him into bed. I gave my address to everyone. I wonder if anyone will contact me. I especially wonder if Marina will check out my site. She was very quiet, but I had the feeling there was a lot more bubbling beneath the surface. Plus, she was cute—okay, she’s young. Shut up, Craig; I can hear you and Cathy laughing at this.
Fast forward to me, walking down the streets of Ulaanbaatar in that vodka-laced haze. After an hour of slogging from the station with my heavy rucksack, I finally reached the Michelle Hotel. Next time, I’ll definitely check the scale of maps in guidebooks before assuming everything on one page “can’t be that far”! The hotel staff looked up my name in their register, then unceremoniously dumped me into a taxi, sending me to the Annujin Hotel, where they gave me a room. You can imagine my bewilderment.
For Mongolia, I’d decided it was too much effort to plan everything solo, so I contacted Andrea at the Adventure Travel Company in Edmonton. She booked me a 16-day Intrepid tour in Mongolia with a group of about ten people. I arrived ahead of the rest of the group, so with my one free day, I hit some museums. Armed with guidebooks, I checked out the Choijin Llama temple and the State History Museum, both of which were superb! I also attempted to pick up my train tickets out of Ulaanbaatar, only to be told they couldn’t find them and to come back later.
I ran into the British youngsters from the train—James, Hannah, and Tamsin—on the streets. They were in a tizzy because they couldn’t find a bank with a working ATM, and they needed money that Sunday for train tickets before the city shut down for the Naadam Festival (10–13 July).
I think tempers were starting to flare up, so I took my leave and went off in search of email access.
I was shocked when I finally opened my inbox. I had several emails asking if I was okay and alive. I was utterly confused as to why everyone suddenly thought I was dead—until I saw Corey’s email with a link to a news story. An S7—Siberia plane flying from Moscow to Irkutsk had crashed at Irkutsk Airport just after I’d left. Over 120 people—mostly children heading to Lake Baikal for the summer—were feared dead. Apparently, the plane had overshot the runway and crashed into a building in rainy weather, the same weather that caused the river to flood.
Coincidentally, Anton had driven me to the airport so I could see the tails of the Soviet MiGs parked there. He had jokingly said, “Four or five years ago, Irkutsk Airport had a reputation for planes falling out of the sky because the runway was a little short.” Seeing my shocked face and my immediate glance at a landing plane, he added, “Don’t worry, the airport is much safer now—nothing’s happened in four or five years!”
S7—Siberia was the same airline I’d flown to the Caucasus. Ironically, the plane that crashed was a modern Airbus. Maybe I shouldn’t have feared their aging Tupolevs so much. For the time being, reader, heed my advice: trains are the best way in, out, and around Russia—despite the border torture.
Hopefully, everyone I met in Irkutsk, and their families, are safe and sound.
I spent my Sunday evening searching for a good Indian restaurant. I hadn’t had spicy food for almost a month and desperately needed a curry fix. Because of my love for restaurants named “Taj Mahal,” I searched high and low for the one listed in the guidebook. Instead, I ended up at Hazara near the Annujin Hotel. The food was okay, but not on par with the gold standard of Indian restaurants: The Taj Mahal in St. John’s, Newfoundland, during the 1996–2002 years. The Indian head waiter told me there were about 40 Indians living in Ulaanbaatar, though he might have meant 40 families. I may not have mentioned this yet, but Mongolian women are gorgeous for the most part; the servers at this restaurant certainly reinforced that opinion.
My thoughts on Mongolia so far? In some ways, it reminds me of Russia, which controlled this country for so many years. In others, it seems like a fledgling Asian nation. Given its geographical position between Russia and China, I suppose this mixture is natural. The road signs and building signs in Cyrillic were now fairly familiar to me. The same Soviet-style housing schemes were rampant here, as in Russian towns—soulless blocks of concrete, each with countless windows suggesting cramped apartments. Most were run-down, with peeling paint and crumbling concrete. When you enter the square in between these blocks, it’s even worse. The place hadn’t drained from the heavy rainfall a couple of days earlier, leaving large, stagnant, dirty puddles for residents to navigate.
There are new condominiums going up, and construction seems to be booming, but I wonder how many will be affordable for the average Mongolian. Traffic is chaotic, reminding me most of Asia. There are bus conductors in vans yelling out destinations and picking people up, similar to Sri Lanka.
The people themselves have been incredibly nice and hospitable. Tourism seems more important to Mongolia than to energy-rich, industrial Russia. After three weeks of generally stoic Russians, it’s refreshing to have smiles coming at you from every direction. Thankfully, I’m no longer the obvious foreigner here, as I was in Russia. So far, no one has singled me out or tried taking my photo. That might be part of Mongolian culture. Either way, I’m impressed so far and really looking forward to the Naadam Festival and seeing the countryside.
Which brings me to what’s happening today (Monday). My roommate for the Intrepid tour has arrived. His name is Derek; he’s from the west coast of the U.S. but now works in Manila as a school counselor. Apparently, we won’t meet the rest of the group until early evening, so we have the day to wander around Ulaanbaatar again.
Quilted Picker-upper
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Monday, 10 July 2006
Today was another day of walking around Ulaanbaatar. The central Sukhbaatar Square has been under heavy renovation. 2006 is the 800th anniversary of Chinggis (Genghis) Khan’s creation of the Mongolian Empire. Giant statues of Chinggis and his famous generals were to be unveiled during the Naadam festival, which officially opens today. For those who’ve forgotten their high school history, you might recall that Chinggis Khan united all the Mongol tribes in 1206 and subsequently rampaged across Europe, creating the world’s largest land-based empire.
Wilting in the hot sun, Derek and I headed for coffee and then to the State Department Store. Ostensibly, the trip to the store was to purchase a hat and some cheap plastic plates for the trek. However, I ended up buying a cup from the “Family of Little Bunnies,” which had the weird Asian-English phrase:
“We are going there with beans. My siblings are waiting for me in the forest.”
Explain that, and I will send you a bottle of wine.
We also popped in to see a quilt show in the store. Someone had raved about it to Derek the previous day in Ulaanbaatar. It turned out to be the work of an NGO: Shin Zamnal (New Way Life) Mongolian Quilting Centre. Its mission is to improve the lives of women in Mongolia, teaching them new handicraft skills so they can earn a livelihood for themselves and escape drunk, abusive husbands. The centre is run by a Mongolian attorney who now devotes her time solely to the project.
There were also Western women volunteering their time and resources to make this project a success. One of them, Maggie Ball, was an expert quiltmaker from Washington and was especially involved in the project. She told me how much it had grown and about its successes over the past couple of years. The quilts made by the Mongolian women—while simpler in design than those of quilters like Maggie—were nonetheless of incredibly high quality. So much so that I bought one in support of the organization. I felt this was one of those independent NGOs doing real good in Mongolia, and I promised Maggie I would drop her a line when I got back to see what I could do to help from Canada.
You ask, how the hell am I going to get a giant quilt back in my cramped backpack? We worked out a plan. The quilt I wanted had already been purchased by some U.S. Embassy official, so they’re going to specially make me one and send it to me in Canada. Considering postal services in this part of the world, I wonder if I’ll ever see it![1]
Derek convinced me to try some mutton, in preparation for probably having to eat meat in rural Mongolia. For those who know me, I’m mostly vegetarian these days; well, fish are vegetables. It all stems from my dislike of farmed meat. I figure the sheep here are happy, so I can eat happy meat. The meat tasted good, though I must admit I’m no longer a fan of the texture of meat or its lingering taste.
Supposedly, my train ticket to Beijing has not been bought yet, but the travel agency assured me it would be fine, and they gave me a cell phone number to call when I return from rural Mongolia in a couple of weeks. As I write this, I’m waiting for the 6:30 p.m. meeting of the Intrepid crew.
Please note: As of 2025, that quilt remains one of the best purchases I have ever made. It is still in use! ↩