Hardcore Sightseeing Vol. III - Inner Mongolia Special - three days full of fun

There are basically two ways of telling the Inner Mongolia Story. I will give you both:

Story 1. What a crab!

Starting in the middle of the night with an almost broken mini-bus full of people. Almost 8 hours of sitting in the car - arriving in the Grassland and seeing nothing but grassy hills. What else? Horse riding rip-off and "home made" milk products - ridiculous. Having meal in a total trash "restaurant" and Mongolian art show with Keyboard music... (Btw. don't even think about the toilets there) Waking up at 6 - skipping the breakfast with meal rolls and inwards and going to the dessert - 6 hours - also because of an blowout at our right front tire at highway speed. In the dessert: spending money again for some "extras" and leaving before the sunset. Spending some more hours in the car... hotel. Heading to an unknown place in the morning and not the Dinosaur Museum. Arriving at 8 PM in Beijing after another 6 hours...
The most annoying thinks: 1. Our guide! No English skills and obviously no clue how to organize a nice trip. This leads to 2. No information of when we are doing what and how much it will actually cost extra. (The trip differed from the one as it was sold.) 3. Artificial tourist events. And 4. The Guide again, because he had a hair growing out of one liver spots at his chin - probable 10 cm long - disgusting! I disgust myself writing about it...

But as I am more of an positive person (at least some times ;-)) I remember the trip more than this:

Story 2. A different China

DAY ONE - The trip to Hohhot and Grassland
After our long journey to the capital of the province called Inner Mongolia we had a nice Hot Pot meal (Just similar to the one I had before; c.p. September 11) And we made a huge mess ;-) We that is Chrissi, some classmates and some other adventurous students - 14 people in total. More or less supported by our guide and the driver.

First mark in Inner Mongolia - that's how it has to look like after a nice Hot Pot.

Our mini-bus is shabby and we doubt that the German TÜV would have approved it, but we can't change it. The loud techno-pop music (our driver seems to be a real fan; but maybe 20 years too late) is waking us up when we fell asleep. In fact the car is trash - I can't even close my window, but it has an extra subwoofer and an obviously quite loud sound system... (I really believe that broken breaks wouldn't have been a problem but a broken honk would have made us stop.)

Here are the Inner Mongolia Music Charts:

1. 2Unlimit
2. Culture Beat
3. Modern Talking
4. Madona Techno Remix
5. ...spanish old school labamba music...
   

In fact every song a real blast! Exactly my music.

As we arrived in Grassland I figured out that is is kind of boring there - just hills with grass. But how could I have guest it? And, there were a lts of tourist villages with the traditional Yurts - round "tent houses" for 6-8 people.

One of the traditional camps with Yurts

Remarkable also that Grassland is the place famous for their milk products - but I didn't see any sheep or cow or whatever can produce milk (except horses) in Grassland. And, so I am also not worried about the stuff we tasted on our horse riding trip (100 Yuan for ca. 2 hours - a little rip-off, but there was not so much to do anyway), because I am sure that is was industrially made - which is actually not a cause to feel not worried about, as we were there in a total underdeveloped area... Horse riding can really be kind of exertive - it's a whole body workout.

Horse riding and tasting "local" products

The dinner is not really worth mentioning, but at least is was always enough and matched the simple environment we were living in - just as the toilets did as well. ( If you are interested - I took a picture...) The evening faded away with some traditional dancing performances, accompanied with synthesizer music, a couple of beer and the traditional Mongolian schnapps - probably the most traditional think we had there...

DAY TWO - The dessert
Seeping in a Yurt is actually not that inconvenient, but maybe the Mongolian schnapps is to blame. I, indeed, felt so fresh that I skipped the extensive breakfast and got directly on the bus towards the dessert.
Someone worked on out seat. It was 10 cm closer to the one in front of us. But, with some effort is was just pushable by our selfs ;-) Does that say anything about the condition of our mini-bus? Maybe, maybe the next paragraph does:
Speed: maybe around 120 Km/h on a normal highway in the middle of nowhere - fortunately next to a motorway station. Bum, bum, rumps, rumps, rumps, - driver is breaking, car is shaking, smell is overtaking, our right front tire is flaking... everybody is awaking!
Right! Blowout! Shit! But, nothing happened. Everyone went out, climbed over the guard rail and went "shopping" at the close shop. Maybe 45 min later the car was fixed - at least the right front tire and we went on... Someone decided at that point to take the train back because she thought we all gonna die. If not at that day then still on the next one... well, it didn't happen...

One should have experienced everything - maybe not.

So, we finally arrived in the dessert which is threaten China from inside and which they try to stop with these thousands of planted trees we saw on our way.

I didn't really had use for these sand-socks and I also didn't pay them at the end, but the picture is nice and this is just a good example for one of there extra costs we had to pay- or could have paid for...

Useless sand socks (if you have boots):10 Yuan; Happy Chinese: free

The dessert offered some activities like sand sledging, cable car riding, ATV driving or the classical camel tour, which we did. Dunes, sand, quietness, some tourists on camels and traces in the sand... a little "zoo/museum" in the middle of the desert and sand again. And almost the perfect sunset. The trip was a good decision.

The dessert trip at a glance (incl. sideshow bob...) - click on the picture to enlarge

Back to Hohhot - Capital and lynchpin of our whole journey. The hotel we slept at was the total blast. Seriously. I don't think anybody expected such a luxury doss. Double rooms, own bathroom with bath tub, disposable slippers etc. and a nearby liquor store... Because of our good experiences with a certain type of schnapps we stuck to the common rule: never change a running system and had a good time.
Note: The local beer taste much better than the watery standard beers.

Hotel

DAY THREE
Wake up call at 6:20 - AHHHHH! Breakfast. Go! The city can't hide its face. Its ugly, poor and backwards. The direct translation would be "blue city". I have no idea why. The City has more than 2 Million inhabitants but it's Wikipedia entry is not even as comprehensive as Flensburg's - my hometown's (xaxa, but still nice comparison).
But, is has the "Children of Genghis Khan Memorial", a souvenirs manufacturing (Wow!), and at least one good restaurant where they offer duck head - and this is where we went. Took some funny pictures and headed back to Beijing, having some normal food.
"Happy trip is over!" As the brochure says.

Summing up the last day in pictures: poor city, duck head, dead fishes in aquarium with a plug ;-), fireworks (according to the moon calender it was a good day to get married), relaxing whoevers, the memorial, heading back, biggest coal power plant in the world (probably also biggest polluter(?)), more techno music, normal food - click to enlarge

The End

If you compare story 1 and story 2 you might find some differences... in length etc.

The most important message is that we survived it, and the truth is like always a mix of both stories... It is just attitude which can change it and weight more on one or the other side.

As I am now one day behind and you might have enough to read at first, I will blog the exiting story of the National Stadium tomorrow ;-) (Also upload some more pictures from Inner Mongolia to this Album ... Watch out for Hardcore Sightseeing Vol. IV!!!

Good night