I suppose I really do need to start catching up with my posts or I’m really gonna be behind. Let me start where I last left off. Three weekends ago was the IES Beijing Do-It-Yourself (DIY) weekend. This is basically a three day weekend during which time they encourage you to plan and go about your own travel in China, providing you with Y1000 per person (after the fact) if you organize all of your receipts correctly. While Y1000 is really only around USD140, it does go a long way for travel within China.
I had decided earlier on in the semester that I wanted to go to Inner Mongolia, the part of Mongolia currently held as a province of China. So, I put a trip together and ran it by four of my friends (Matt, Rona, Mae, and Alba). The plan was this: three cities in three days—focusing not on the cities themselves but the nature and sites around the cities, using them only as bases to get to other places. Before we left, my teachers told us that they thought we didn’t have enough time for the trip and still make it back for class on Monday morning (we didn’t get any money from IES if we were late on Monday), but I remained confident.
So, Thursday evening after classes, we headed to the Peking Airport for our 9:00 flight to Baotou (only about an hour away by plane). I had made reservations for a hotel for Thursday night via text messages in Chinese. The five of us arrived at the Baotou airport only a little bit tired, but ready for an adventure. Despite the fact that the airport is only 2km south of the city, all of the taxi drivers refused to use their meters instead asking Y50 (anything under 3km should be Y6 in Baotou). We finally determined that we had no other choice, since it was 11 pm by that point. What’s more since there were 5 of us, we had to take two taxis. Before I go on, let me just thank IES for planning this trip on the weekend of May 1st, a Chinese national holiday. We got to our hotel in no time at all, only to find that they had no rooms. We discussed with them for a few minutes, showing them the text messages and asking them what they wanted us to do. They told us that the text messages had been from a staff member in the cafeteria, and therefore they weren’t responsible for it (WHY SOMEONE FROM THE CAFETERIA WOULD BE MAKING ROOM RESERVATIONS, I DON’T KNOW!!!). They offered us a suite for about three times more money than we were willing to pay. Seeing that we were desperate, they finally offered to call around to other hotels to see if they had availability. After a few minutes on the phone, they told us that there was a hotel about 15 minutes away by foot that confirmed they had a few rooms, but couldn’t promise anything. So, we walked in that direction and finally found it. They had two rooms available for us, so we checked in and settled down just before midnight.
The next day we woke up at 7:30am and ate breakfast at the hotel, before heading to the train station. The plan was to get train tickets to Hohhot for that evening and bus tickets to the city closest to the desert for that day. Unfortunately, the train station only had standing-room tickets for the train to Hohhot. We discussed it, and agreed that since it was only a two hour train-ride it would be okay. At the bus station we were hounded by local drivers offering to take us to the Resonant Sand Gorge (our desert destination) for a fairly high price, claiming that we wouldn’t be able to get taxis from the bus station in Daqi (the city closest to the gorge). We found it very hard to believe that there wouldn’t be taxis, so we took our chances and went with the bus. An hour later, at the Daqi bus station, we found that we had chosen well, since there was a lot full of taxis waiting to take us. We arranged a price with two drivers and set off further towards the gorge.
The Resonant Sand Gorge, according to Lonely Planet China is “a slice of the Sahara dropped into the Inner Mongolian grasslands…,a section of the Kubuqi desert with sand dunes up to 110m high,” so-called because of the sound that the sand is supposed to make when you step on it (we didn’t hear anything). In any case, the Resonant Sand Gorge is a desert area with many fun activities in addition to just enjoying the desert itself. So, after stealing five pairs of brightly colored shoe-coverings, and grabbing a quick lunch, we ascended the gorge by foot (there was a chair-lift, but we’re too lihai [hardcore] for that, or maybe just too cheap). We decided to first go for a 30-minute camel ride up to an outpost a bit away into the desert and then back. Then, we broke IES policies (which state that we’re forbidden to operate motorized vehicles in China) by going for an ATV (all-terrain vehicle) ride over the dunes. I had never ridden an ATV before, and besides the time that I went too fast, got stuck, and had to push, it was a lot of fun. Finally, after fully enjoying the desert, we went sand-sledding back down into the gorge (definitely a fun sledding experience), before heading back up to the entrance to head back to Baotou. Arranging all of this transportation was especially difficult since we needed to have official receipts for everything in order to get refunds from IES.
The restaurant that we had planned to eat dinner at in Baotou had still not opened, so we took a walk, found another restaurant, emptied the sand from our shoes, then headed to the train station for the standing-room only ride to Hohhot. Standing-room only turned out not to be that bad. We were able to sit on our bags, and get reasonably comfortable. About an hour in, I was approached by two Chinese girls, asking if they could practice their Chinese with me, and offering seats to my friends and me if I agreed. So, I agreed, and we went and talked with them for the remaining hour.
We had arranged to stay at a hostel in Hohhot, run by a Mongolian man named Zorigoo, for two nights. When we arrived at the train station, Zorigoo’s friends and three Australian girls (also staying at the hostel) were waiting there to greet us. We walked to the hostel, and settled in. Anda Guesthouse, was really just an extra apartment, but was cozy enough. They had Mongolian tea waiting for us upon our arrival, and we talked a bit with them before arranging a trip with them to the grasslands for the next day and then going to sleep.
There were 6 American, British, and Australian people, all currently teaching English in China, also staying at the hostel. So, in the morning, we all headed north towards Xilamuren (the location of the grasslands closest to Hohhot). On the grasslands we had a traditional Mongolian breakfast and lunch, and walked down to a dried-out lake. The grasslands are called the grasslands, because in the right season all that you can see for miles and miles in any direction is the grass and the sky. We knew before we went on this trip that it wasn’t the most ideal time to visit the grasslands, since the green season had just begun. As such, the grass was minimal, but the feeling of nothingness was still the same. On the lake, one of our hosts showed us how to Mongolian wrestle, and I gave it a shot with one of the other visitors (I won…). Then we decided to go horse riding. Because the family that we were visiting only had 3 horses, one of them rode over to a nearby family to have them bring more horses over. We went riding for an hour up to a hill, which was a Mongolian holy site, and then back to our starting point. Somehow I managed to pick the fastest horse. Instead of letting me figure this out for myself, one of the Mongolian guys rode next to me the entire time. I was a little annoyed since I didn’t really feel like I was leading the horse, even though we were in front of everyone else. So, I told him in Chinese, “you know, I’m from America. I’m a cowboy. I ride horses all the time. No worries.” That, of course, didn’t work. So, I rode with this Mongolian man and talked with him. He asked me where America was. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer, since he obviously didn’t have a great grasp on geography, probably never having left the grasslands, or maybe only having gone once or twice into Hohhot. I told him, “you know that big sea next to China? The Pacific?” He said, “I’m not sure. I may have seen it on television once.” I said, “well, it’s really, really, really big. Much bigger than China. And if you cross that sea, you’ll get to America.”
That night we returned to Hohhot, and had ate at a Mongolian restaurant before walking around for a while and heading back to the hostel to rest. When we got back to the hostel, we played with Zorigoo’s 10 year-old son, who insisted on telling us a ghost story in Chinese. Of course, the power went off in the middle, which actually gave it some weight. Then we took the opportunity to play in the dark, before going to sleep for an early departure for Datong in Shanxi province.
The bus to Datong was an early one, and took five hours. We got in around 11:30 am, and went immediately to buy our train ticket back to Beijing. Remember how I complained about IES having scheduled this trip on a holiday weekend? Well, here’s where it matters. When we got to the train station, we were informed that everyone and their mothers were trying to get to Beijing, and there were no more seats on any of the trains. There were, however, standing tickets. But this was no 2 hour ride from Baotou to Hohhot—this one was 6 hours in the middle of the night. We quickly ran to the bus station to check if they had any seats. They had few seats on the next bus out, but that wouldn’t give us enough time to go see the Yungang Grottoes (the first Buddhist carvings in China). So, we took a vote, and opted to buy the standing tickets for the train, holding out hope that, just like our Baotou to Hohhot trip, we’d have room and be offered seats for speaking English with someone.
Our tickets in hand, we went and got lunch before making the one hour trip out to the grottoes. The Yungang grottoes were very impressive, and worth the visit. The Buddha statues carved into the hills were gigantic towering through their caves. While we were there, we were even approached by a probably 80-some year-old woman to sign a petition for Taiwan’s Independence. Not quite sure what to do, my friends signed “Harry Potter” and “J. Hancock”, knowing that this was probably not the best document to have our names on. On the way back to Datong, we stopped to walk up through a mining village to search for Mongolian beacon towers and a piece of the Great Wall. When we reached the top of the hill above the mining village, we realized we’d climbed the wrong hill, seeing a gigantic beacon tower and a piece of the Great wall over on a neighboring hill (but at least we saw them).
Back in Datong, we ate dinner and headed back to the train station. Our train was schedule to leave at 11:30pm. When it finally approached, and it was our turn to board, we thought that there would be no way. People were literally hanging out of the door, and inside there was not even enough room to lift an arm. If anything, I’m playing down the situation. I turned to the train attendant and asked, “how do we get on?” Her response was: “Push!” So, we did. We pushed and pushed, and were pushed, and just as our last group member made it into the mess, the train started off. For the first 15 minutes, we thought that we were going to die. Six hours in this situation would have been enough to make all of us go insane—even sardines would have felt uncomfortable. No air-conditioning, no space, no comfort whatsoever. Fortunately, we were able to keep pushing and find an aisle with not too many people (meaning while I still couldn’t lift my arms, I could at least put my bag down.) So, we did our best to stand. A couple hours in, it started to clear out a bit more as we hit more train stations, and a few people offered to let us sit while they went for smokes. Then, one of my friends found a small corridor, which was a bit cooler and more spacious. So, we migrated there, and tried to get some sleep. Of course, each time that somebody passed (which was probably at least every five minutes), they woke us up, even if they could have stepped over us. This was probably one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life, but it was a true China experience. We got into Beijing at 4:40 am, tired, sore, and glad to be back.
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