3 Years Later, Ciao Ciao Shanghai!

After wrapping up their dusty stint as Mongolian nomads, Tiffany and Zach eagerly returned to China for one last, relaxing visit to their favorite beach resort and to say farewell to the Motherland. The Hilton in Sanya has been one of their favorite get-a-ways during their time in China, and it was fitting that they celebrated their third anniversary there, as they had also celebrated their first anniversary there. It is a picturesque resort. The cool, aquamarine waters of the vast pool system that run throughout just beg you to jump in, and sweet scents of colorful, tropical flowers draw your eyes as well as tickle your nose as you walk around the grounds.

Zach cleaned up for the anniversary celebration with a long soak in the room's giant bathtub.

Then it was a romantic night of room service dining and duty-free pink champagne. Tiff and Zach came to grips with the astounding realization that 3 years had passed since getting married in Chicago that fateful day. And the evening was spent laughing and rehashing all the adventures of the 3 years since.

The time in Sanya passed quickly, as Tiff and Zach made sure to enjoy all of China's best offerings, like great massages, perfectly legal Cuban cigars, and a brand of drug-store ginger ale called Watson's that is hands-down the best ginger ale they ever drank.

After one last, long stroll down the pristine beach, satisfied and stuffed with non-Mongolian food, they headed up to Shanghai to say their final farewells:

Farewell Shanghai, with your towering, modern skyscrapers and your eager-to-be-pale Chinese toting sun umbrellas!

Farewell Shanghai, with your massive modern art constructions, laden with complex symbolism that no one understands but with which everyone is suitably impressed anyway!

Farewell Shanghai Centre co-workers and friends, who blessed Tiffany with their kindness and helpfulness, and kept her sane in the midst of working for a crazed management ruled by the idiosyncratic and the inane!

Ah, farewell Shanghai, for all of your practical nature and belief in air-dried laundry!
Farewell, Shanghai, and your odd sense of advertising pets with terrifying, Godzilla-like gerbil pictures!
Farewell, old home, Top of City (not "Top of THE City", mind you), where Tiff and Zach found comfort and solace and a place in China that they readily called "home"!
Farewell amusing English translations accompanied by equally amusing images!
And, finally, as they headed to the airport for the last time, farewell Credit Suisse van, who drove Zach all around Shanghai and completely spoiled him, and farewell Xiao Xu, the van's faithful driver, who eagerly arrived to escort them, not caring, or more likely not realizing, that Zach was no longer an employee!

Farewell Shanghai! Farewell China! Farewell!

Mongolia Part 2 - Boys Camp

Before I forget, I wanted to mention that Mongolian is a very strange sounding language. They share a border and a lot of trade with Russia, and the influence, including a Cyrillic-based script, is evident when they speak. It sort of sounds like Russian with a heavy lisp. Imagine Sylvester the Cat with a Russian accent ("thhhssssufferin' thhsssuccotash comrade!"). And while the culture remains Asian, the fashion, especially in the main, capital city of Ulaanbaatar, is definitely western. All in all, very confusing to try and absorb.

Anyway, after leaving the Siberian taiga grasslands of Jalman Meadows, we continued on to the second half of our Mongolia journey, located in the Gobi steppes and where we arrived at Arburd Sands, or what we named "Boys Camp". The difference was evident that our second stay in the gers would be a little rougher. Run by a man who came from a long line of horse riding nomads, he had a motley crew of about 8 Mongolian boys and 2 women that did the cooking. Our tent got dirty the first day during a rainstorm, and pretty much remained that way the entire stay. The toilets didn't have the pleasant, odor-neutralizing potpourri spray of Jalman Meadows, either. But we soon came to love the easy-going, rough and tumble nature of the camp.

The staff showed us how the gers were built, and with me stuck in the middle, they quickly constructed a ger around me in about 10 minutes.

Here we are with the head of the camp (in the middle of Tiff and me), and some of the boys. We loved the fact that these tough guys were dressed in traditional Mongolian silk shirts, or the full gown with sash, often wearing bright, flashy colors.


But most evenings after dinner, they gave no quarter when it came to game time. Here we are engaged in the mortal combat of tug-o-war. Most of their games involved some sort of violent action, whether it was dodge ball (or "fish in a barrel", as they called it), marco polo (where one person was blindfolded and ran around trying to tag people, all the while getting pushed in the back and tripped by laughing friends), or even duck-duck-goose, where the chosen "it" person had a balled up scarf to throw at the opposing player.
I tried to teach them a less violent form of entertainment, with the classic "human pyramid". I think their favorite part was when the pyramid collapsed and crushed the people on the bottom.They taught us about the "Three Manly Sports", in which Mongolians compete every year in an annual Naadam Festival. Wrestling, Archery, and Horse riding are the three skills dearest to every Mongolian man. I tried to avoid the random wrestling matches that seemed to break out around camp every day, but I did work on my archery.
We had a few wicked storms pass through while we were there, part of the very welcome rain to hopefully end the 8-year drought that Mongolia was suffering through.
After the storm passed we enjoyed incredibly beautiful skies, with the vast landscape lit up by a multitude of colors, and particularly stunningly scenic sunsets.
As we tried to experience the nomadic life in the Gobi, we tried our hands at riding camels again. Luckily, unlike India, we didn't encounter any sandstorms this time. But the lack of saddles and only a few, thin layers of blanket between the camels' spine and our bottoms left us sore and eager to return back to camp. Both camel and rider were quite happy to be free from each other and back at camp.
After the last, terrifying experience riding horses in Jalman Meadows, we knew we had to try it again and bury those memories. The gentle horses, combined with the soft, sandy soil kept the horses' pace slow and Tiff and Zach very happy.

Tiffany befriended the youngest member of the staff, and he proudly showed her around the camp.
While Tiff was exploring the beauty of life at Arburd, I quickly reverted to my childhood, finding fascination in the artifacts of death around the desert. Bones and animal remains littered the desert sands, which exposed the reality of harsh life in the Gobi steppes.
I got into the swing of things, and jumped and ran around the sandy desert.

While Tiff maintained composure and calmly enjoyed the natural beauty of the land.

Another day dies out with a blaze of glory.

We took a day to visit a sacred Buddhist mountain, where many of the rare, native animals could be spotted. We were quite lucky and saw everything from gazelle sprinting across the fields, to ibex argali sheep (similar to gigantic bighorn sheep) perched high in the mountain tops.

When we stopped for lunch this adorable little beggar cleaned up with Tiff and me. Who could resist that face?!

As we drove through the valley splitting two mountain ranges, we continued to marvel at the vast, picturesque Mongolian land.

We were fortunate to run into our camp head's famous horse master father, Choidog, who at the spry age of 80, famously said, "While I have breath in my body, I will ride and train horses." He continues to breed and train race horses for the Naadam Festival.

We visited a few local nomadic families to experience Mongolian life. After the babies are separated from their mothers, the moms are lined up for their daily milking. Here Tiff helps release the moms after the milking is completed.
And then, in one of the cutest scenes we witnessed, the babies are let loose from their pen, and like a massive after school pickup, the babies bolt out of the pen, yelping for their mommies, while the moms bleat out "Here I am!" and everyone runs around until the proper parent-child match ups are made.

Space inside the gers is at a premium. "Now, where did I leave my handbag? Oh right, it's next to the slab of raw mutton..." And the hanging cord on the left between the blue mixing bowl and the stirrups? That would be the sheep intestines, squeezed out and looped together and sold for god knows what use. The ger family assured us that the sheep had been slaughtered that morning so all the meat was fresh. Whew!

The goat and sheep milk is turned into a variety of foods, from milk tea to yogurt, cheese and curds. And with all those animals running around, who needs firewood when you can use dung chips? The very casual way in which the ger mom shoveled out handfuls of the dung chips only served to reinforce the knowledge that we could never make it living as Mongolian nomads.

But the absolute highlight of our entire Mongolia trip came on our final day and was completely unplanned. On our first day driving to Arburd Sands, we came across the heart-breaking sight of a baby horse, trapped out in the pouring rain, timidly nuzzling the unmoving body of its mother, who, without sufficient strength and fat reserves after the years of drought, had apparently succumbed to the many consecutive days of cold rain. Full of supplies and bags, we had no room to squeeze in the poor foal. Although the head of the camp drove back to the site that day after dropping us off at camp, he reported back that the baby foal was gone.

Well, we had pretty much written off the chances of the baby foal surviving without her mother, but sure enough, three days later on our return drive, we spotted the weak baby. With nothing but a canvas cord and years of horse training experience, the camp head (with our tour guide) managed to capture the foal and secure her legs. We then lifted her into the back of our car and took her over to Choidog's ger camp.The two little boys at Choidog's were given the responsibility of convalescing the foal, and immediately their eyes lit up and they ran off to get her some water. She had lain so still in the car that we weren't sure just how weakened her state was, but she eagerly lapped up the offered drink, and the boys were already preparing some watered down sheep's milk to feed her in a few hours and discussed trying to find another mare in the next few days to try and nurse her back to health.
Tiff and I were thrilled to have had a small part in saving the little pony's life and, after determining that indeed the foal was too large to fit into our carry-on bags, made sure to give her lots of hugs and well-wishes before we had to depart.

Mongolia Part 1- Girls Camp

Tired of spending the night in hotel room after hotel room, Zach and Tiffany decided to trade in the comforts of hot showers and heat for outdoor, nomadic-type living in traditional Mongolian ger camps. Our first 'ger' experience was at Jalman Meadows, located in the Siberian Taiga.

The camp was run by a strict and professional Mongolian woman and it showed in the camp. The ger Zach and I were assigned was beautifully decorated and sparkling clean.

The weather was chilly, particularly at night, but we soon became spoiled by the fire elves that snuck into our ger an hour before we woke up to light a fire in our stove.

No smelly outhouses here! The outhouses were constantly deodorized and stocked with toilet paper and even had a sink with soap!
Even the meals were dignified. We had tea time every afternoon, and meals were served with real plates and silverware. The meals were a bit heavy on mayonnaise-based dishes (everything from beets to carrots), mutton and meat fat, but we really couldn't complain since usual camping food consists of power bars and PB&J.

Although the region has been in an 8-year drought, our arrival seemed to please the rain gods, as it stormed a majority of our time in Mongolia. But there was just enough sun to power the solar panels, allowing us to get a lot of reading done.

We also spent plenty of time in the Genghis Khan library playing games with sheep ankle bones (apparently all the rage in the nomadic circles)...and dressing up like traditional nomadic herdsmen...During the few brief respites from the storms, we managed to befriend some of the furry locals. This guy looked pretty tough, but was quite friendly and gentle.

We even came across the remains of some furry animals, as the drought has been tough on many of the herds. Zach was eager to smuggle this home, but Tiffany was less than eager to integrate animal remains into the home decor.

Horses outnumber people 14-1 in Mongolia, and have been an integral part of life for centuries. So it was inevitable that at some point we'd suit up and give horse riding a try. We cavalierly overlooked the camp's warning of 'not recommended for unskilled riders', after all, we'd collectively ridden about 3 times in the past 5 years, that surely must put us solidly in the intermediate category.

We realized we might be in a bit over our head when the ger camp's horseman was sent out to round up our horses, as most of the time they roam freely. We found out through experience that Mongolian horses have a mind of their own and aren't one to follow commands, especially when they're coming from two green foreigners. To make matters worse, the saddles provided were missing pommels, as Mongolians traditionally hang on to the horse with only their legs. So when our horses broke into full-on galloping, something they did often, we had nothing but a corner of horse blanket under the saddle to cling to with our white knuckles. Needless to say, after a morning of each of our horses taking turn breaking away from our small group and galloping off into the vast, never ending expanse of grasslands, we both kissed the ground as soon as we dismounted.
While we were a bit disappointed with the weather, by the time we left for the Gobi desert, we had noticed a huge change in the grass. It had gone from a deadish brown hue to a bright green color after just 4 days!