World Trip

Ulaanbaatar

August 25, 2005

Our last day in Mongolia. It is kind of sad, as I think each one of us really learned to love this country. I certainly did. Since we had not done any souvenir shopping along the excursion, we had Aagi take us shopping today. We went to a mall and stocked up on things to remember this place by.

Later on, everyone went to eat and I took the opportunity to get a new camera. Sure, I could have waited until Beijing, and would probably be able to save a lot of money, but that was not the issue. I felt naked without a camera, and really needed one. It’s as if I was missing a crucial body part.

I found a Sony store and got myself a nice CyberShot DSC T3. Next, I needed a biger flash card for it, but unfortunately, the Sony store did not have any. The best I was able to do at the mall was 256 Mb. I needed more, and eventually found an electronics store that had a half a gig card, which I bought.

When I got back to the restaurant where I left everyone, I was shocked. None of them were there any more. This was a problem. I did not have the address of the hostel, as there are no addresses in Ulaanbaatar. I no longer had the piece of paper with directions either. The only thing I knew was that the hostel was not too far away from the center of town, which is where I presently was, and that across the street from it was an Irish pub with a big green Guinness banner. I decided to use that as my reference point.

I flagged down a taxi, and headed off in a direction. My goal was to drive around a bit to see if I would be able to find some sort of landmark. After making a few turns, the driver instinctively realized that I had no clue where I was going and started asking me a bunch of questions that I could not understand, nor answer. I went for my fallback, and did the best mime impression of an Irish bar. I figured there can’t be too many of those in this city. He acted as if he understood what I wanted.

We pulled up to an Irish bar. It was not the one. So I used my international sign language skills and explained to him that it is a different Irish pub, which again, he seemed receptive to. Five minutes later, we were in front of another Irish pub, and again, it was not the one I recognized. So I tried the same trick again, but he was clearly getting annoyed. He pulled over by some young girls and asked them if they spoke English, which they did a little. I explained to them my situation, and told them to tell the driver to just keep driving in ever-expanding circles and that I would recognize something, and of course pay the full far. Once again, he went along with my strange request.

As we were waiting on a light, I heard someone yelling my name. I look over, and there was Aagi sitting in a parked car on a side street. I quickly paid the taxi driver and jumped into Aagi's car, who drove me to an Internet cafe where the rest of he group was. I was in a city of about 900,000, and luck had it that I met the only local that I knew.

The evening was soon approaching so we packed up from the hostel, said goodbye to the great staff, and went to the train station. Aagi came along with us. We got on the train and said goodbye. He is a great guy and I recommend him greatly for his services, if you ever find yourself in Mongolia. If you meet him, ask him about the Polish group from the summer of 2005, see if he remembers Kasia (kah-sha). He promised that he would not forget, and somehow we think that was genuine.

We took off on the train in the direction of China, and had a quiet and peaceful ride until we fell asleep.