China

Our train departed from Ulan Bataar at about 8pm. We settled down for a night on the rails. The train was noisy this time and I didn't sleep so well so I woke up a bit groggy the next morning. We arrived at the Chinese border about 10am which was at a place called Erlian. We were headed for Huehot which is in Inner Mongolia. Strangely Inner Mongolia is inside China, it is supposedly an autonomous region but even from that first stop at the border things seemed markedly different to Mongolia. We got off the train for a couple of hours whilst they changed the train bogeys. This basically involves them hoisting up the train, removing the wheels and replacing them with another set, becasue the rails in China aren't as wide as those on the rest of the line. It seemed like a strange system to me but there you go. The train rattled on for the rest of that day and we played cards to pass the time.

We finally arrived to Huehot about 9pm and lugged our bags off, we were met by our guide and about 6 of her friends who had come to meet us becasue they had never seen a westerner before!! This was a continuing theme throughout our time in Huehot and we seemed quite the celebrities, people would stop and stare in the street as you walked past and continually said 'hello!' to us. Huehot itself was amazing at night - neon lit the city to the point of saturation and we wandered around being dazzled.

On our first full day there we visited some temples and the old town and then went for Mongolian hotpot for lunch. This is a dish you must not miss. A huge pot in the middle of the table had two different kinds of soup - one ginger and spring onion, the other so spicy it took your breath away. Then you are given all sorts of meat and vegetables and noodles too that you drop into the soup to cook. It was one of the best meals I have ever eaten and washed down with Chinese jasmine tea. After lunch we went to a factory shop where they were selling all kinds of leather and stone, cashmere and food products. One of the more interesting things there was a dried mushroom which was about 3 feet long in a mahogany presentation case. Quite who buys these things I'm not sure but it was certainly impressive as mushrooms go. We passed up the opportunity to buy stuffed deer, tigers and weird mushrooms and got an ice cream instead but even that was a bit weird - purple ice cream what's all that about???

Our final stop of the day was at the history museum - this was a mixture of the natural and national history of Inner Mongolia and whilst the natural was impressive with several full size dinosaur skeletons the national seemed a little contrived, most of the narrative seemed to have been written by the Chinese government itself and was always praising 'the party' as the communists like to call themsleves. Incidentally I have disovered a new phenomenon called 'museum fatigue' it is simply defined by the fact that when you are in a museum you will start yawning after 30 minutes at the very most, no matter how interested you are by the exhibits. It is an involuntary response which is caused, I think, by slowly walking around large rooms full of stuff and which can only be cured by 'museum fatigue antidote' which is a nice sit down and any drink containing booze. Presumably if you do not consume the antidote quickly enough you will sucumb to the advanced form of the fatigue and fall into a coma - at least that is an excuse I have found works most effectively.

That night we went for a meal at a local restaurant that our guide had recommended. This was the most food for the least money I have ever seen and it tasted great, 6 dishes with all the tea you could drink came to about 10 quid. There were, by the way, 4 of us eating! We went for a walk to aid the old digestion as we were all stuffed and on our way back to the hotel happened upon what I thought was a bar. It looked like it from the outside and there was music blaring so I suggested that we go for a drink. The hostess on the door led us up some stairs and into a little room with a big television at which point I realised we were in a Karaoke bar. God I hate karaoke. It has to be the single most embarassing passtime known to man. There was the most dire selection of songs in English but there was nowhere to hide and somebody had to sing, noone else seemed very forthcoming so I ended up singing the bloody backstreet boys. Mortified. It ended up costing us more than dinner for one drink and a large dose of humiliation.

The following day we had a great dim sum breakfast in the hotel and checked out. Our train wasn't until 8pm so we left our bags and went to explore a little on our own. Ruth and I ended up in a huge department store as I wanted to buy a bag. We wandered around for maybe an hour and a half but when we went to go somewhere else a storm had rolled in and it was lashing with rain. When we got up it had been sunny so we were dressed in shorts and t-shirts with no raincoats. Idiots. We sat and had some tea for a while but the rain still hadn't stopped. It took us a further 45 minutes to find a place in the shopping centre that sold umbrellas and by the time we got outside it had stopped raining. Idiots. We went back to the hotel and had a couple of drinks to pass the time before the train. When we boarded the train we were pleasantly surprised it was much cleaner and modern than the other trains we had been on and it was nice to have a bit of luxury in the cabin for our last train journey. Beijing was the next stop.