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Things I learned about China that I didn't know before I came to Central Asia:

1. It's under construction

A common sight in Xinjiang

Demolition of old-town Kashgar, new-town Kashgar behind

Especially in Xinjiang, construction is rampant. Villages that one guidebook (from 2002) said were "good places to see traditional Uighur culture" and another (from 2010) said was "beginning to become another Chinese city" were very much in urban development when I went to see them. The Han locals that I spoke to supported it, for the most part. One woman I met in Ruoqiang said with pride, "yes, there is much construction. This is a developing city!"

 During my time in the province, the most common job of the Han people that I met was "construction engineer." They all told me that Xinjiang was the place to come once they graduated because if the push for development. Mao's encouragement for the eastern Han people to move in and help develop the Uighurs is still very much present here. Most of the travelers whom I met were very opposed to the "destruction" of Uighur culture, as were some Uighur people. However, I also got a sense that the economic and educational benefits that come with China-fication were very much appreciated.

2. The military and police personnel are very friendly, and professional

Despite the sometimes quirky or seemingly oppressive laws that they are required to enforce, most of the individual police officers or military personnel whom I met in China were very friendly. Not only that, but they were always quite professional, too. They took care of their uniform and appearance, they did their jobs dutifully, and I never once was asked to pay any bribe or other "fee".

File photo from an earlier post. A very enthusiastic police officer in Northern Xinjiang. He wanted to capture our multi-national group (Vietnam, Russian, USA)

As soon as I entered Kyrgyzstan, however, the difference was very apparent. The first two Kyrgyz border guards that I met were sitting on a rock on the side of the road, shirts untucked, eating sunflower seeds with their backs to the trucks waiting to cross through their gate. Once approached, they passively flipped through my passport, examined the Chinese visa only (not any of the information that might be pertinent to their jobs), and let us pass.

Within hours of being in Bishkek, I heard two seperate stories of travelers being hassled by police or fake police for bribes or passports. A threat to call the embassy seems to be enough to get them to back off, luckily.

3. They have mummies

Those are two real people who lived 1000s of years ago. Crazy, right?

Ever think mummies were just for Egypt? WRONG! it turns out Xinjiang is almost entirely desert, and when you bury a body in the desert, it just sits there. For a very long time. Almost every town had a museum and each museum had a collection of mummies from the area. This one in particular had a dozen, including 3 infants. Interestingly, most of the mummies are light-skinned, tattooed central asians, not east-asian.

4. EVERY town has a central square.

Not only that, but every central square has a gigantic TV that plays Chinese TV until midnight every night. Nearby, a crowd of middle-aged women will be dancing choreographed, yet tame dances to pop music (think "electric slide" quality dancing, maybe a step up from "macarena")

The TV at night

Statues of Mao were also popular additions to these squares

5. English isn't a strong suit.

OK, maybe I knew this ahead of time, but it's still fun to see some of the signs. Here a a couple of examples:

What do you mean when you say "carrots" and "basket"...? Is that TP?

Yes. A good reminder while I pee in the nasty, nasty, uncleaned urinal hole.

Things I've learned about Central Asia so far:

1. The food from Mongolia to here is basically the same, but becomes more flavorful!

Below is an example of meat in a pocket of bread. In Mongolia, it had various names, but basically consisted only of boiled mutton and bread. In Xinjiang, it was known as cao bao zi and had a little bit of spice added in with the mutton. Here in Kyrgyzstan, it's called samsa and is super flavorful. It's still mutton and mutton fat, but they add in onions and probably a good handful of spices to keep things interesting. I love street food.

Hot pockets ain't got nothin' on this

 Below is another dish. I forget its name in Mongolia and Xinjiang, but it was usually some type of rice with a bit of vegetable mixed in (here it's yellow peppers), topped with a chunk of meat. In Central Asia, it's called Plov and gets quite a bit more varied. The meat is in smaller chunks and is mixed in with the rice, and the vegetables are more varied. I hear there is even plov with pistachios in Uzbekistan...

Plov. it's fun to say, right? Plov plov plov.

2. Even though you're in the high mountains, you should still be careful about drinking the water.

Ever since that last night with the Kazakh family, my GI tract was having issue on-and-off. After three weeks, I decided to take some antibiotics. After a full course of antibiotics and no improvement, I decided to take the opportunity in Kashgar to visit an English-speaking doctor. Conspicuously, my symptoms disappeared as soon as I arrived at the hospital, leading the physicians to think that I was just crazy or a picky eater, and leading me to try to get a stool sample into the cup shown below:

my target practice facilities...

I've given stool samples in the states before (last time I came back from traveling, actually). There, you have a little tupperware bin that you can seal up and pass to the lab techs. In Kashgar, you go in a small cup that seems to have less structural integrity than a Costco sample cup, then you walk across the building, down a flight of stairs, through a crowded waiting room and hand the open cup to a lab tech, who examines it immediately under a microscope to tell you that he can't find anything interesting. On the plus side, the half-day at the hospital only cost me about $2.50.

3. Hospitality is a virtue

Everywhere I've been in Central Asia I've met tons of super friendly and welcoming people. Couchsurfers and others have put me up for a night or several, I've been given meals and free rides. One of the drivers that picked me up actually tried to pay ME 50 yuan (~$8) for food after he dropped me off.

Couchsurfing in Kashgar

Upstanding Kyrgyz gentlemen celebrating a new baby boy. Roma and I had been allowed to spend the night at this truck-stop cafe about 20ft away while they were celebrating...

 

4. Hitchhiking isn't as hard as people say

I tried it on a whim in China and it worked quite well. Research about Central Asia, however, told me that it would be very difficult and most people would want money. I met one traveler who came from Kyrgyzstan and had been successful, however, so that was enough for me to give it a try.

My experience thus far: not bad at all! It usually takes a few tries before someone will actually pick you up. They still aren't quite used to the idea here in Kyrgyzstan. Most people will just try to direct you to the nearest taxi stand instead. Once you make it clear that you just want to get somewhere in the direction of where you're headed and that you're not going to be paying money, though, some people will happily take you. Trucks tend to be the best option, as they're already getting paid and are probably pretty bored from days of driving anywhere. 

If you're not in a rush, have time to spare and don't mind super awkward attempts at Russian conversation followed by hours of silence and hand guestures, it's great!

Fro truck. He didn't give me a ride.

Truckin' it

Sometimes they break down...

Sometimes they are SUPER heavy and SUPER slow (biking would have been faster on the up and downhills than this truck)

When your tire blows out, just swap it for one of the others! Who needs a spare when you have 18 wheels?

Roma the non-monogomous muscovite mountaineershops for Sega in Osh, Kyrgyzstan

Roma and I waited for about 2hrs in this town before we got a ride.

Relaxing in the frieghtliner. Good ol' Detroit manufacturing, complete with American-sized bed in the back

American truck, Russian Gazprom.

Co-pilot and driver near the Kyrgyz-China border

sometimes it's more hiking and less hitching

5. Politics are a mess. Borders make a big difference, despite ethnic ties.

Central Asia has a fascinating history. So many different peoples have lived in these lands over the millenia that it has become very difficult for anyone to say who was "here first". As a result, when lines are drawn on a map they become a good excuse for nationalism. Stalin drew some lines back in the '30s that are causing loads of issues in this region today (take a look at a map of the 'stans to get an idea).

The Russian and Vietnamese researchers that I crossed from Mongolia into China with were studying the effects of nationality on spiritual beliefs and traditional customs in the Kazakh people in the Altay regions of Russian, China and Mongolia. These people all come from the same ancestors not too long ago, but modern borders have separated them. The researchers' preliminary observations were that the peoples in each country were now more similar to their countrymen in Moscow or Beijing or UB than they were to their ethnic brethren across the border. Nothing published yet, but an interesting idea nonetheless...

Chinese border guard helping Max (Korean) and I get a ride to Kyrgyzstan

The bustling metropolis of Irkeshtam, Kyrgyz border town. Basically a trailer park/truck stop in teh mountains.

Independence day in Bishkek (31 August. 21 years of independence after the collapse of the Soviet union)

6. Learning another language is hard. Russian is really hard. Chinese is even harder. Mongolian/Kazakh/Uighur/Kyrgyz/Tajik/Uzbek/Chinese/Russian all at the same time makes you want to go to Central America with a spanish phrasebook.

I gave up on learning more than a few phrases in Chinese. I'm going to start taking Russian language classes for a short time while I wait for visas here in Bishkek. Wish me luck. So far I feel like I've only been able to experience a certain amount from my travels. Watching someone like Roma, my Russian hitchhiking buddy, be able to have a full conversation with our drivers or other locals, made me realize that by learning a bit more of the language I will have more opportunities to get a feel for what life is really like for the people whose homeland I'm visiting.

Harry's Russian twin, "Garry" Potter. He must go to Durmstrang.

7. It's very mountainous. And beautiful. And sparsely vegetated.

ooo

aaah

this wasn't even the craziest road

you could see the bottom of this lake through tens of meters of water.

So there are some of my thoughts over the past week or two of Central Asia. I'm in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan now and will probably stay here or in the region for the next two weeks at least as I apply and wait for my Uzbek, Tajik and Kazakh visas to go through. Luckily I have some contacts in the area who can show me around, and the mountains aren't far away, so I'm sure I'll have enough to keep me busy. I'll keep you posted on any adventures...

I was so hungry...

...that I actually ate a horse. Well, maybe not a whole horse. It was more like two bites of my friend Lucky's horse, but was still my first taste of horsemeat. It tasted a bit like beef mixed with tuna. No joke.

So clearly, I'm in Mongolia, as you probably gathered from my last post. But before I get too ahead of myself, let's go back to the beginning: Beijing.

Those aren't clouds. That's just smog.

I landed on Wednesday night and actually got picked up by my couchsurfing host, Xuehua, at the airport. This was amazing since it was already nearly midnights and public transportation had stopped running. Her apartment was super swanky, as were her tastes, but that worked out well for me since she ended up taking me out to some delicious chinese restaurants. I forgot to take pictures of the good stuff, unfortunately, but I do have this picture of my meat-on-a-stick and soy milk cup lunch to hold you foodies over:

Om nom

 In my two days in Beijing I only really got to see two sights: Tienanmen square (top) and the 798 art exhibition. Other than that I just wandered around and tried to figure out how to get to Mongolia. The wandering let me practice my fledgling Chinese when eventually I started asking people how to get to the subway station, which happened to be about a 10km bus ride away (my host had dropped me off without telling me where I was).

The getting to Mongolia bit actually ended up being easier than I expected. Xuehua picked me up along with another couchsurfer from Spain/France, Jean. He didn't stay with us, but he was also heading up to UB taking the slow route and had met some other travelers at the Mongolian embassy who had helped him out. It turned out that all of the buses to Erlian, the border town, were sold out. Luckily, one of the travelers, Miao, is Chinese and found a guy on the black market who was selling bus tickets. I had to bump my departure date up by a day to go along with them, but it was totally worth it. Our posse now consisted of myself, Jean, Miao, Miao's boyfriend Aaron (from Kent, WA, actually), and Roberto, a Panamanian.

The bus to Erlian was a 12-hour sleeper bus. I've never been on a sleeper bus before, and my first assumption was that I would definitely not fit. I am significantly larger than the average Chinese person. As you can see:

Tall man in a little bed

 The bed actually ended up being surprisingly comfortable, or maybe it was just me, but I slept soundly through the night. Then I woke up to dinosaurs:

Welcome to Jurassic Park (Inner Mongolia)

The Gobi desert is where some of the first dinosaur fossils were found. As we approached Erlian, it became apparent that someone is really proud of this. After the brontosaurus archway we drove for another several kilometers flanked by life-size statues of dinosaurs roaming the desert.

While on the bus, we met Zoloo, Helle and Helle's mother and younger brother, all Mongolians. Zoloo spoke English and was more than happy to teach us some Mongolian and to help us cross the border. This friendship proved invaluable as Miao's Chinese became less and less useful the further north we went and we started relying more and more on our Mongolian friends' help. Our posse thus grew to 9. Then we arrived at the station in Erlian and the girl sleeping behind me introduced herself as a Korean traveling alone named Heijin. Now we are 10.

The plan was to get train tickets in Erlian, then to cross the border to Zamin-Uud via minibus to catch the train that would take us 15 hours north to Ulaan Baatar. The problem was that we were not the only ones with the same plan. The Nadaam festival is happening this week in Mongolia and everyone is on summer vacation, so there is a surge towards UB and nearly everything is sold out. We decided to try our luck anyway and wait in line for tickets in Erlian.

And wait we did. We arrived at 6am, but the ticket counter didn't open until 9am. we were a good ways back in the line by the time we got there, but "lines" are a fairly loose social construct here, so there was a lot of jostling for position for the next three hours. When the gate finally opened, they let us know that there were no tickets left, so all of our waiting was in vain anyway. Here's a picture of a couple Israelis getting pulled out of line by the police because they cut everyone off:

The "line" for tickets

Not to be deterred by a lack of tickets, we made our way for the border anyway. At this point, it was already too late to cross in the morning. Obviously the border guards have to take a lunch break from 11-1:30 every day, so we waited some more. Luckily I could do it in style in our super official minibus:

I'm sure it's official. Just ask that lady

Then we crossed the happiest border in the world:

Nothing says "welcome to the chinese exit" like a rainbow

 And then we got to the train station:

Zamin-Uud station

But, we still didn't have tickets. Despite arming our Mongolian savior, Zoloo, with all of our passports and some well-trained elbows, they still wouldn't sell her any tickets, much less 10 of them. On to plan B: Jumping the train, bribing the ticket-checker until later when we could buy a ticket from the conductor. We had heard that it was possible and had been done the week before, so we were hopeful.Once tre train arrived, though, we saw that there were two officers posted at every door checking tickets and passports. Wah wah.

On to plan C: The black market. This worked well for us in Beijing, so maybe it would work here? We were down to under an hour until the train arrived and several of us ran around trying to find scalpers to sell us tickets. The Mongolians were having better luck, as the scalpers would triple the price for us foreigners or just walk away when we drew attention to them. Even then, they only had a few tickets and wouldn't be able to get all of us on the train. It was looking like we were going to have to spend the night in Zamin-Uud and hope for the best the next day.

But then there's Plan D: The blacker market. Miao met a Chinese guy somehow who knew the conductor on the train. He talked to the conductor and got her to sneak us on to the train, into a locked cabin that was set aside for just such a purpose, to then pay her 150% of the original price later on. Mission accomplished:

Me, Jean, Roberto, Heijin, Miao and Aaron in our reserved cabin

6 people in a 4-bunk cabin for 15 hours actually ended up being quite comfortable (our Mongolian friends had their own cabin). Another pleasant surprise from Mongolian transport, which I had been led to believe was absolutely terrible. They even had a restaurant car with Mongolian food:

Lamb, fat, egg, rice, potatoes, mmm

Then we went a long, long way across the desert and steppe:

 

Choo choo

Until we finally arrived in UB:

Roberto, Aaron, Me, Miao, Jean, Heijin, Zoloo, Helle, Helle's Mom

 I was hoping to stay with a family in a homestay in UB, but that fell through. Apparently there was some miscommunication. What I was thinking would be more like a couchsurfing setup with me covering some food costs was what they were thinking would be more like a rich American comes to town and throws money everywhere. After speaking with Batka, my connection in the city, I declined and opted to stay in the guest house for a couple of nights until I figured out my next plans.

I was worried that the guest house would separate me from interacting with locals, but I actually was able to luck out again. Although I'm still seeing the posse from Beijing quite a bit, Aaron has some students of his who are from UB who have been showing us around and teaching us Mongolian. Their names are Snake, Tsogol and something I can't pronounce that means "Lucky". Yesterday we settled in and had a birthday party for Helle, today I wandered around the city before we went to the gigantic statue of Chinggis Khaan and ate some delicious Khoshuur (fried lamb dumplings), horsemeat, and fermented horse milk.

Lucky, my Mongolian teacher. It helps that he doesn't speak English

On the way to the Chinggis Khaan statue, we saw police officers lining the road every half kilometer or so for miles and miles. The only explanation I got from our Mongolian friends was "something for Government". I shrugged it off as Mongolian weirdness until a policecar with lights blaring came driving down the middle of the road the opposite direction demanding that all cars pull over and stop indefinitely. So we did.

Waiting for the motorcade

And we saw a truck full of Camels and goats:

Transport in Mongolia isn't uncomfortable just for people

And then a motorcade drove by. The Mongolians I asked said that it was "president" or "ambassador" or "government something", so I felt pretty excited to be seeing what I thought would be the Mongolian president's motorcade. Upon reading the news just now, it turns out it was Hilary Clinton coming to visit. I've never seen her in the US, so of course I should run across our Secretary of State in Outer Mongolia.

By the time we got to the statue I was tired of paying for things, so I opted not to go inside the museum and just to watch my companions wave from atop the great Khaan's noble steed:

Man, with a horse that big no wonder he took over the world.

So that's what life is like on my end. I'll try to keep the updates coming! I'll leave you with this to drool over until next time:

Khoshuur. Delicious.