Everyone Loves a Panda

Hey everybody,

I wrote this bit on the train about a day and a half out from Moscow on the journey across Siberia.  We’d been on that portion of the ride two days since we left Irkutsk and no one had tried to throw us off the train, though Mae really did her best to make this happen.  My travel beard had grown ferocious and wild... it could not be contained and visibly frightened children and small animals.  I wish I could say the same about my travel hairline. 

This all started because Rich has been on the road for the last year or so but is due back in England in April for the annual scan to make sure he still has a brain.  Though anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise, the NHS insists on thoroughness.  Rich wanted to mark the Trans-Siberian (I guess Trans-Mongolian technically) off his life checklist.  The call went out... who would be dumb enough to join Rich in this quest spanning 6 days and 7000 Km in one train compartment? 

Mae, Jeremy and I flew to Beijing where we met Rich for three days in the Chinese capitol; a city where where Mae is considered tall and if the air were a crayon it would be burnt sienna.  Apparently our visit coincided with a holiday and everywhere we went was packed with Chinese tourists.  As we wandered through the narrow hutongs where our hostel was located we were reassured that we were indeed among civilized people by the sight of a conveniently placed Starbucks across the street from Tiananmen Square.

Coming soon to the Folsom Street Fair

The square itself is fairly vast and surrounded by imposing government buildings and museums.  With all the Chinese tourists around there was one thing in particular that stood out:  The popularity of asscrack pants for kids.  I don't know what else to call them... they're regular pants with the part over the crack completely open, and the deluxe model even has an opening in the front.  They look like tiny chaps except they're made from cotton and worn by a Chinese toddler. 

Tiananmen Square faces directly on to the Forbidden Palace which, judging by the amount of time we had to wait in line to get in, uses a very liberal definition of the word "forbidden."  Once inside we noticed that, while the first few buildings were nicely restored, the further you walk into the grounds, the more run-down it gets.  Honestly, the two things that stood out about the Forbidden Palace were that it has a basketball court (no joke) and the garden on the north end is fairly well-kept.  Oh yeah, and while waiting in line we bought these mystery flavored popsicles that were made out of some kind of space-age substance that wouldn’t melt even after a half hour in the sun.

Panda Reservoir Dogs

We wandered north through a series of hutongs on our way to the lake district, during which Rich had the genius idea of buying a panda hat at one of Beijing’s many panda-themed stores. Three white guys wearing panda hats instantly became the most popular attraction around Beihai Park.  People kept stopping us to take pictures, or asking us to take pictures with them, or simply pointing and laughing.  The only logical step at this point was to rent a three-man bicycle and ride a lap around the two lakes which, I have to admit, was one of the most fun things I've ever done.  Apparently the sight of a triple-threat panda bike is quite rare.  We were celebrities for a day; I have no idea how many pictures were taken of us since the ones that we took are only a fraction.  We even crashed a modeling photo shoot.  It was like “Anchorman”… I don’t know if you know this, but we’re kind of a big deal in Beijing.  Not to overestimate the impact, but the three of us may be responsible for the single greatest achievement in Sino-Western international relations of the last 20 years.  Which… apparently didn't extend as far as the cab drivers because at the end of the night no one would stop to pick up three giant pandas and a bunny.

The next day Jeremy and Rich had... uh... a little trouble waking up (they’ll say otherwise but they are liars, drunks, and probably sodomites) so Mae and I ended up taking a trip to the Great Wall on our own.  The bus ride was over three hours during which we were treated to a hearty breakfast featuring the Chinese staples of Sausage McMuffins and coffee, then handed identification tags to wear around our necks because our guide candidly admitted to the group that all foreigners look alike to her and if we wanted lunch we’d better wear our tags. 

The portion of the wall that we visited was at Jinshianling which luckily was not very crowded.  The Great Wall itself is a remarkable achievement in construction and they've performed some diligent work to restore a good portion of it.  I have to admit though that I didn't feel the same sense of history walking along the wall that I've felt at other ancient sites I've visited.  Maybe what dampened my enthusiasm was the fact that the surrounding landscape at the end of winter is brown and the air is hazy so that the wall itself seems to blend into its environment.  I'm glad we saw the wall but I'm not sure I'd sit through another 7+ hours of bus rides for a return trip.

At 7:30 AM the next morning began the first leg of our train journey which spanned a day and a half from Beijing to Ulan Bator.  The allure of the train journey has long been a topic of writers over the years, wistfully dreaming about the possibilities such a trip may afford.  Well any romantic ideas about the ride tend to disappear when you enter a train car filled with migrant laborers that smells like cigarette smoke and b.o.  This marked the beginning of Mae’s multinational one-woman campaign to rid Chinese and Mongolian trains of unauthorized smoking, or, as the rest of us liked to call it, the campaign to get our asses kicked in a foreign country.  Actually, Mae had multiple one-woman campaigns along our journey that fit under the same umbrella, but this was the one that came closest to success (not for the smoking, for the ass-kicking).

Creepy Chinese Waldo

Sure we made friends, like the creepy guy who looked like a Chinese version of Where's Waldo blessed/cursed with Kathleen Turner's “Jessica Rabbit” voice.  He wandered around our train car, opening the door to our compartment and asking the same questions over and over like "Are you American?" and "Do you like China?" and “Do you like spicy food?” then walking off.  The highlight was when he opened up our compartment door and asked "Do you sleep at night?" then rubbed his hands and walked away.  We started locking our door after that.

There's not much countryside to speak of from Beijing all the way to the border… it's all cities and factories that are difficult to distinguish through the smoky air.  We saw some power plants, which was exciting.  The laborers exited the train at a town about 50 miles from the Mongolian border.

You are only allowed to import items
valued at less than 100 dollars!

Let me ask this question… why do border guards have to dress like they were officers from The Empire in Star Wars?  When did this become the official outfit?  You’re half asleep, filling out forms that are either in a foreign language or written in third-grade English, this guy walks in and you’re somehow expecting Darth Vader to follow him through the door asking you what you’ve done with the plans for the Death Star.  Between midnight and 2AM someone stormed into our compartment approximately 847 times.  The only one of us that was immune to the hassle was Jeremy, passed out on the upper bunk, wearing a panda hat.

We awoke to the sights of the Mongolian plains outside our windows, endless stretches of rolling hills occasionally dotted with villages of round huts called gers or with packs of wild horses running free.  Occasionally the solemnity of the Gobi desert would be broken by a factory or some kind of refinery but the landscape remained fairly barren until we began to reach the outskirts of Ulan Bator.  We went from seeing one car every hundred miles to full-fledged traffic jams as we motored toward the center of the city.  UB immediately strikes you as a place that doesn't fit with the rest of the Mongolia that we saw through the compartment window.  There are newly constructed highrises and office buildings through the center of town, and the roads are jammed with late model cars and SUVs.

After spending a day in the city I wouldn't say that Ulan Bator should be a destination in itself.  I think most travelers who visit Mongolia go there to experience a trip to a village to live in a ger for a few days, using UB as a stopping point on the way there and back.  It has the requisite giant main square surrounded by government buildings and museums with statues of great Mongolians.  The people are tall, they seem to take great care to dress stylishly, and the consensus among the three guys was that Mongolian women are surprisingly hot.  We had a couple of great meals where I ate some of the best lamb in my life and the Mongolian yogurt was fantastic.  The one reminder of the nearby desert is the constant grit in your teeth from the dust blown into the city.

The next leg of the rail trip can only be referred to as... chaos.  As soon as we boarded there was a flurry of activity all up and down not only our car but the entire length of the train.  Mongolians with bags full of clothes, bags, shoes and other stuff were running up and down into each others' compartments then coming out with a whole different set of stuff.  A couple of people popped their heads through our door speaking Mongolian and wanting to hand us bags and clothes to store in the bins under our seats or overhead.  One guy who stank of vodka and was clearly off his face barged in and tried to force a couple of his bags in the bin under where Mae was sitting, so we had to physically kick the dude out.  He showed up again a few hours later, stumbled into our compartment, grabbed his junk, pointed at me and yelled "peesta!" then left.

I felt like we were somehow stowaways on a 10-car smuggling vessel.  The motion up and down the aisles was almost constant for the hours until we reached the Mongolian border with Russia.  This is when things started to get really interesting.  Once the Mongolians figured out that they couldn't get some items through the border, they'd bundle them up and throw them out the window to some friends they had waiting outside the train for just such an emergency.  The Mongolian border guards went easy on us, but we could hear all sorts of ruckus going on in the compartments nearby as they turned them upside down.  They were nothing though compared to the Russians, who went as far as to open up the light fixtures in the compartments and the aisles to make sure nobody was trying to smuggle drugs.  In spite of all this a large chunk of merchandise made it through, though I don't know how you could not spot it when a guy is wearing 10 sweaters.  There's no way that happens without the conductors and some of the officials getting a cut of the action.  Remarkably, we got through cleanly with no one wearing a panda hat.

Next time... Russia.  For now, enjoy these pics from China and Mongolia, most of which I blatantly poached off my travel mates...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ttmeynDd2AmdwhjK6

Take 'er easy,

Dave