The following morning, at 6 am we landed in Hong Kong . I had 5 hours of layover to kill, so I got out
of the airport to sweltering heat (and me carrying a heavy jacket meant for the
frigid nights of Mongolia ).
There was not enough time to visit the main town, so I had to be content by
taking a local bus to the nearby town of Tung
Chung , where I stretched my legs walking through
impossibly high apartment buildings, which are cleverly connected to each other
via a maze of above ground corridors and shopping malls. I had changed US$10
into HK$74, and had spent HK$9 in bus fare, so by the time I got back to the
airport I had HK$63 burning a hole in my pocket. I had a leisurely lunch of
noodles and giant prawns, and by 12 noon was ensconced in an economy seat with
Mongolian Airlines (MIAT) for the last 4.5 hour leg of my trip to Ulaan Baatar
(which could also be spelled Ulan Bator or Ulaanbaatar; nobody can tell what
the true spelling is because in Mongolia they use the Cyrillic alphabet, and
there are no set rules on how to convert into the Roman alphabet, so to make my
life easier I may just call it UB).
I landed in UB at 5 pm, and was pleasantly surprised by how
fast I got through immigration and customs. The Mongolian authorities basically
believe that if you are here for less than 30 days they will make life easy for
you, which I find extremely civilized (for more than 30 days you need to
register with the police, and that makes things a bit more complicated). I got
out in the arrivals hall by 5:30, and started looking for my Goddaughter, Zoe
Dilles, who for the last 9 months has been teaching English at one of the local
universities. No Zoe to be seen, so I used the time by going to the SIXT counter
to make the necessary arrangements for the car we were going to rent. I was at
that when Zoe popped out of the crowd, like a Jack-in-the-Box! She is such a
cute young woman, and I was delighted that she, her dad John, and myself were
going to spend two weeks of quality time traveling together to western Mongolia .
I was just handing my credit card to the lady in the SIXT
counter when a chill went through my spine: Despite the lists and the days of
preparation I had forgotten to notify my credit and debit cards of my summer
travel pans! The thing is, credit card companies are pretty skiddish when it
comes to seeing a sudden charge from a place that you don’t normally frequent,
so they freeze your card when there is any doubt! I imagined having all my transactions
being denied for the next three months, and me out in the sticks without a
brass farthing. Well the charge went through for the car, but when I wanted to
get cash out of the ATM it didn’t go through. Stupid, stupid, stupid. OK, get a
hold of yourself and don’t panic. Zoe offered to use her own ATM, but for the
time being we would be OK until I found another ATM that might be more
friendly.
John wasn’t coming in for another two hours, so Zoe and I
decided to take the car and go to the hotel to decompress. It was not the best
of decisions because the traffic was dense, but at least got me used to the driving
karma of the town (it is bad yuyu, because drivers are pretty reckless and seem
to have little regard for getting their cars scratched and dented in small
fender-benders). But we got to the hotel, where everything was in order, and
thanks to the miracles of modern technology was able to connect with my two
banks via Skype and make the proper travel notifications (big sigh of relief).
On the way back to the airport we stopped at a shopping mall
to use the ATM machine. There were actually five of them, side by side, and I
busted three of them until eventually I was able to extract 400,000 Mongolian
Tugriks from the fourth one. One US dollar equals 2,400 MT, so despite feeling
a millionaire all I had was the equivalent to US$170.
We got to the airport 5 minutes ahead of John coming out of
customs, and needless to say we were both very glad to see him. He had started
half a day before me, on a Portland to Tokyo flight, but had a
20 hour layover at Narita airport, so he was double glad of finally arriving in
UB and seeing his daughter. By now it was getting late, so after dropping his
bags at the hotel Zoe took us to a popular restaurant, The Bull, for the first
of our traditional Mongolian dinners, hot pot. The restaurant was very nicely
appointed, and on each table there are individual stove heaters, where you are
brought a small pot with boiling broth. On the side you order platters of
thinly sliced horse meat, veggies, mushrooms, and noodles, and then you proceed
to use the boiling broth as your own cooking pot. The broth is pretty
tasteless, but the more you add to it ingredients, soy sauce, peanut sauce,
garlic, chiles, onions, and cilantro then the tastier it gets. It is a kind of
racelett, in which you leisurely spend the time cooking and chatting, only now
and then stopping to scoop some of the tasty mix into your bowl. We all had a
nice tall glass of Mongolian beer with the meal, and at the end were presented
with a tab of 50,000 MT; about US$20 J
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