It's the end of the May holiday; I've had the past week off and I return to finish out my classes - give exams and watch movies - tomorrow (and for the next three weeks). I did some traveling over the holiday; I spent five nights in the fab city of Hohhot, Inner Mongolia (it's a province in China that is next to Mongolia, hence the apt name. ) I ended up in Hohhot through some strange twist of fate - my original plan called for me to go to Qingdao, a lovely city on the sea where all the women are foxy and the beer flows like water. This plan fell through - the friend (who shall remain anonymous) I was to travel with had something come up at work at the last minute and could not back out. Thankfully, Mel, also a teacher at Beihang, invited me along on her trip - which she had already planned.

I accompanied Mel and her friends Debbie and Cat to Inner Mongolia. I managed to have a pretty good time, although I would not say that the trip was relaxing. I managed to postulate a few rules of traveling in China after all the pain and suffering - I'm sure that most of you won't be surprised, but if I can spare a few people some frustration, it'll be worth it.
I'll include them in the timeline - I'll place them at the moment they became obvious to me.

The trip started at 8 pm Saturday - Mel, Debbie and myself met Cat at the Beijing West train station. We proceeded to the lounge to wait for our train to discover that it was loading - and so we hurried to find our beds in the hard sleeper section of the train. Doug's Rule #1: when booking hard sleepers, never book a bottom bunk. I had never been on a sleeper train before, and I was not as impressed as I could have been. It was tight and crowded, and our bunks (being on the bottom) were used as seats for the teeming masses until lights out and as steps on the way up and the way down. Thankfully the majority of the train ride was at night, and our intentions were to sleep away most of the time. This was not to be. Directly above me was a man who was quite possibly the loudest snorer that I have ever heard. Now my father is known for his ability to make the house shake with the noise of his sleeping, but my father could not hold a candle to this man. It would have been impressive, had I not been so tired. The one highlight was watching Mel (who is maybe 5'3" and a hundred pounds) pummel the man above in a slight fit of righteous rage.

Early the next morning we arrived in Hohhot. We gathered our belongings, moved off the train and were met by a man who had been sent by the hotel to make sure that we arrived safely. I was a little wary, but the girls hopped into line and followed him. I followed the girls. Thankfully the hotel was directly across the street from the train station - we could not have missed it had we deliberately tried. Upon entering the lobby the man finally introduced himself as a tour guide who worked closely with our hotel. He began talking to the clerk and eventually became quite rosy in the face - apparently the hotel had taken our reservations but not kept any rooms for us to stay in. The tour guide smiled and led us casually out of the hotel and down the street to a different, less classy establishment. Doug's Rule #2: do your best to avoid staying in places that post room rates by the hour. After a bit of haggling we procured two rooms - a single for me and a five person for the three girls. We said goodbye to the tour guide and went to our rooms to settle in and regroup. Upon entering my room I was a little surprised - it seemed very clean and the bed was quite comfy. The girls were not so lucky - there room was a complete disaster. Seeing as we paid 10 kuai ($1.25) for my room and 40 kuai ($5) for their room for the night, I wasn't terribly surprised. They seemed to be. After a bit of hemming and hawing, we headed out into the streets of Hohhot to find an agency to arrange a tour of the grasslands.

This was not as easy as it appeared - The Lonely Planet guide to China turned out to be completely wrong in almost all respects to the city of Hohhot - the map was completely wrong, descriptions of sites and attractions were completely false and misleading- nothing was where it should have been. Doug's Rule #3: Never trust a guide book So we were led on a wild goose chase through the back alleys of Hohhot. After hours of searching we stumbled on to the Inner Mongolian Hotel, a five star hotel located far away from the city center. An official tour agency was supposed to be housed inside according to the lonely planet; unfortunately it was not to be found. What we did find was the hotel tour guide who tried to sell us on a grassland tour, gave us a real, correct map of Hohhot, and found us cheap rooms in a three star hotel (attached but not affiliated with the Inner Mongolian Hotel.) Since we had booked our other hotel for the night, we (the girls, really) decided to spend that night in the sleaze joint and spend the next night in the three star. I'm still not sure why they chose to do this - their room was scary.

On the way back we stopped at the Inner Mongolian Museum, a place so packed full of propaganda that it was more amusing than informative. It did have a sweet wooly mammoth skeleton, but that was the highllight of the Inner Mongolian Museum. We headed back to our hotel and now set out on our original mission: find a tour of the grasslands. We eventually stumbled across another tour agency that had a guide who spoke pretty good English; we decided to book an overnight tour of the grassland with this agency. This made me happy, since my Chinese is OK, but not great - Mel was happy to have me come with her and her friends since my Chinese is better than theirs. Doug's Rule #4: Always travel with someone who speaks the language better than you do. Having an English speaking tour guide made my Chinese skills almost a moot point. So I was a little happy and a lot relieved - all would be well.

It was supper time, and we set out for a Mongolian hotpot restaurant for our nightly repast. For those of you who aren't in the know, Mongolian hotpot consists of a large pot of bubbling broth that you use to cook meat and vegetables. The broth comes in two varieties - mouth-numbingly spicy and sweet. It's a lot of fun and pretty tasty. It also takes a remarkably long time to eat - we had been eating for a little over two hours when our waitress came over and motioned for Cat to follow her into the kitchen. Cat disappeared for a few minutes, and then reappeared to ask Mel to come back into the kitchen as well. A few minutes passed, and then Mel and Cat sauntered out laughing and giggling. They sat down with rather pained smiles on their faces and informed Debbie and I that the waitress had told them that two customers in the restaurant were planning on robbing us when we left the restaurant. The waitress had said that we could wait in the restaurant for as long as we wanted - they would eventually leave. Now I wasn't terribly worried - mugging a foreigner is a crime that has the stiffest of penalties, and I assumed that they would just try to pick our pockets. But the girls wanted to wait, so wait we did. Eventually the customers in question (a man and a woman) left, and we headed back to our hotel without incident.

The next day we packed up our stuff and moved into the three star hotel - I had gotten a great night's sleep, but the girls had not fared as well. They had spent most of the night trying to keep their skin off of the sheets and pillowcases. After settling in to our rooms, we decided to head out to see a "picturesque" mosque. It would have been picturesque, had it not been under construction. We then moseyed down to the main shopping district, where the girls spent an enormous amount of time shopping for jewelry and gloves (for the grasslands) while I desperately tried to keep myself entertained. I've always had a pretty easy time staying entertained, but even my most valiant attempts failed in Hohhot. Their desire for shopping sated and my patience having expired a few hours before, we headed off to dinner at a restaurant mentioned in the Lonely Planet. This restaurant was right where the LP said it would be (a first) but the restaurant did not have famous dishes mentioned. Relying on my formidable pantomime skills and modest knowledge of Chinese, we managed to only order twice as much food as we needed and left the restaurant quite full. Since we had to get up incredibly early the next day, we turned in early.

We arrived at the tour agency a little after eight am and were on our way to the grasslands by nine. Our English speaking tour guide turned out to be slightly more insane than we hoped - she loved to sing Mongolian songs to us and force us to sing western songs back to her - Edelweiss and Jingle Bells being her favorites and what she demanded from us. She also forced us to take milk tablets (white pills that have the taste and texture of pure unadulterated evil - and I am being kind when I say that.) Upon arriving at our "resort" we deposited our bags in our yurt (a large Mongolian tent) and hopped on our horses for a two hour ride around the grassland. My horse, while nice and tame - some might say with one foot in the grave - did not respond to English commands. It sat quietly until the tour guide clucked and all the horses started plodding along. It was quite thrilling. When the riding was finished, we watched a horse race and some "authentic" Mongolian wrestling - it boils down to grappling, since no hitting or kicking is allowed. After this we had an "authentic" Mongolian dinner. During dinner the baijiu appeared. Baijiu is "white wine" or as I would call it, watered-down engine degreaser. It tastes slightly better than a milk tablet. The Chinese people at our table began pouring out toasts to us foreigners and we, not wanting to offend them, drank with them. Thankfully we were sunburned from the ride, and they thought that we were blushing from the booze. They did slow down a bit, but they all ended up sloppy drunk. I did not end up in such a condition, and I will not comment on the state of my companions. While they were drinking they would sing and then, like our tour guide, would force us to sing to them - we used American Pie, Yesterday, and Oops,..I Did it Again to placate them. After this we were treated to a show of "authetic" Mongolian culture - singing and dancing. Apparently the accordian was invented in Mongolia - I was unaware.

After this wonderful display of "authentic" Mongolian culture the four of us headed back to our yurt to sleep. I haven't mentioned this yet, but the grasslands of Mongolia are known for horses and wind chill - a stiff gale constantly blows, and makes a beautiful spring day feel more like winter. At night it gets mighty cold. Yurts are lined with heavy wool cloth to keep in the heat and stop the wind, but our yurt was a little defective - there was a sligt draft which kept us up all night shivering. So very cold - Mel and Cat both admitted the next mornning that they were positive that they were going to freeze to death - I knew that I would have to suffer. The next morning we headed back to Hohhot after an "authentic" Mongolian breakfast consisting of Chinese breakfast foods.

We wasted a lot of that morning sitting in a coffee shop trying to get warm. We spent most of the afternoon in a park sunning ourselves. The park had a zoo, which was depressing, and a ferris wheel, which offered a great view and a high probability of death. We went back to the hotpot restaurant from the first night for dinner, and after dinner boarded a sleeper train back to Beijing. We had a soft sleeper this time, which provides a private cabin for four with a lock on the door to keep out stewards, robbers, etc. It was nice.

That's a quick run through of my trip to Hohhot - it was a good time, although I'll never travel under those conditions again (especially not to Hohhot.) A few random thoughts for some random people...

Rachel: There are free horses in the grasslands. All you have to do is lassoo'em and tame them and they are yours. Getting them home might be a slight problem.

English: Mel blames you for everything that went wrong on this trip. Just thought you should know.

Beth: I think a yurt should be the "next step" in our families camping escapades. A yurt's supposed to be portable (although the ones that I saw were anything but) and I'll see if I can rustle one up for this summer.