TRAVELOGUE #5

When: Saturday, June 17
Where: Beijing, China to Mongolian Boarder

I bought some more fruit before heading across the street to the train station. According to Andy of Monkey Business, I was supposed to meet four more tourists and a guide. The other travelers ended up being two American boys and a couple from the U.K. Actually, there were five people total if you counted the six month old baby strapped to the chest of one of the Brits. The adorable family of three had been traveling through China for the past 6 weeks and now they are Moscow bound. Can you say, intrepid?

The Americans (Sean and Tim, don’t ask me which was which) ended up sharing a four bed cabin with me on the train. I don’t know what to say about them except they reminded me of some of my students: corpulent, white, aloof, suburban. Everything to them was either “gay” or “bad-ass.” Before the train departed the station one of them ran out and bought a Peking duck sealed in a bag and two huge beers. Then, without words they sat opposite me and cracked the beers open with their teeth. I glanced at my watch. It was 7:40 in the bloody morning. Right now they’re playing dominoes, taking hits off a bottle of Wild Turkey while discussing the virtues of nuclear power.

The fourth person sharing this cabin is a Dutch woman named Korrie. She is very amicable and has been traveling to Ulaanbaatar since the late 1990s. The other two did not seem interested in engaging her, but I picked her brain. She cautioned me about pickpockets and mutton. She also told a hilarious story about sharing a cabin with a Mongolian family and how they hung sausages up from the ceiling.

Our car attendant (Mongolian woman who looks like Japan-ame) just distributed departure/entry cards; one side is in Mongolian the other in Chinese. I noticed mine had one blank side, so I found the same attendant and asked for another. She grabbed it and examined it briefly. Then she strode to the back of the car and I followed. There, she met up with another attendant. She said something to her comrade in Mongolian and then they both cackled madly, looking sideways at me. Then she simply tore it up and went on with her business completely ignoring me. Isn’t that so awesome?