The travel day in Inner Mongolia was every bit as weird as I was expecting it to be. We managed to go from China to Austria to North Africa in a day. That statement is going to need some explanation. We started off the day with the understanding that we would be visiting the grassland and the desert, although none of us knew what this meant. We got on the bus, knowing that we were in for at least a two and a half hour bus ride. As we moved away from the city, we found ourselves going through mountain valleys and through tiny villages. We were momentarily stopped when the road went right into a river that the locals reported "wasn't there yesterday". I'm not exactly sure how that happens, but I'm not going to question it. That was about an hour and a half into the trip. An hour later, windmills started popping up on the landscape, and we started to climb up the mountain. As an aside, I feel like I should talk about the windmills. The PROC wants to make Inner Mongolia a center of green power production, which is a delightful juxtaposition with all of the dirty coal that gets mined there. If what we saw was any indication, they may actually be making good on that goal. We must have seen over 300 windmills, all spinning merrily. The bus rounded a corner, and then, bam! Yurts, which are apparently the Inner Mongolian sign for tourist stop. We get out, and all around us is a beautiful alpine meadow full of wildflowers and tall grass. I rode a horse through a field and sheep were grazing everywhere. We walked through the field and back again, and I've never seen so many colors in a field. There's some pretty good photos in my album. We then had a lunch that consisted of some buns, a whole chicken, guts and all, and a bag of gizzards. As it turns out, gizzards are great, and trying to get the meat off of a whole chicken isn't. Tired from the hike through the field, almost everyone took a nap.
I awoke two hours later thinking that we'd be near the desert. I was completely wrong. We were still traveling the same road we took to get there, and we wouldn't get to the desert for another two hours. Following a stop at the worlds worst public bathroom, we arrived at the desert, and wouldn't you know it, there's more horses. I briefly tried to resist the temptation to ride, but they said it was 20 yuan to ride, and if I could do it while singing Horse With No Name, why the hell not? Well, you know how they said it was 20 yuan? As soon as I got off the horse, the price changed to 50. I did not have 50. He demanded all of the money in my wallet, and since I had about 35 yuan and $5 in it, I decided it wasn't worth arguing, and gave him my damn money and walked down the dunes. Dan had a different experience.
See, Dan had no intention to ride the horses, but the same guy that swindled me followed him, constantly pestering him to ride. Dan finally got so annoyed that he got on the horse just to shut him up, and soon found himself in the same boondoggle that I accepted minutes before. Dan was in no mood to deal with this shit, and refused to pay. He came back to the group to get someone to translate, and a shouting match ensued. It escalated, and then one of my favorite moments of the day happened. Jeff was a TA that had lived in America and could swear about as well as any of us, he is also a big kid. He heard about what was going on, and immediately took off running down a dune to the argument, yelling FUUUUCCCKKKK YOOUUUUU! at the top of his lungs. Following this, the headmaster of the school in Wu Dan, who looks like an Asian Dave Heins, said that we weren't paying anything, and we all got onto the bus. The bus took us to another set of yurts, where we were treated to a feast of lamb, but not the parts of lamb you would expect. Instead of, you know, meat, I ate liver, heart and tongue, and lord did I pay for it yesterday.
(WARNING: BUTT STUFF) I have always tried to avoid public toilets here, but sometimes, you can't really control it. Such was my plight yesterday, when I got off the bus 10 minutes away from the train station, and realized I was in a mission critical poop situation. I frantically found a bathroom and proceeded to make the most disgusting sensory stimuli I have ever created. Following this, I thought I was good. I... was... not. Five minutes down the road, I hit mission critical status again, and proceed to wreck another bathroom. This second bout was enough to get me to the train station (Another Aside: What is with communist countries and super ornate train stations?), where after a third ejection of what was effectively hot, putrid water from my butt, I was back to stable bowel status, and relaxed. Train ride was nothing worth noting, I slept for seven hours, and now I'm back in Beijing. Time to buy that bag.
-Cooper
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