The scenery on the way was pretty much endless vast, dry grasslands, except for a 5-minute stretch before entering the city where metal dinosaur sculptures dotted the fields. I planned to stay in Erenhot for a night and take some photographs of the dinosaurs.
All signs in Erenhot are tri-lingual, with Cyrillic, Mongolian script, and Chinese.
Alima from Anda's had a Mongolian speaking friend living here, and I called him for help finding a place to stay and crossing the border. Unfortunately he was out of town, but his girlfriend met me at the bus depot. She told me that I had to leave immediately, because they were closing the borders for 3 days due to the Chinese 5/1 holiday. I learned that Mongolians are very wary of Chinese people, since their country is sparsely populated and they don't want hordes of Chinese entering. Being from Taiwan, I could understand.
The girl got me on a Mongolian jeep, negotiated in Mongolian, and found one that had a bilingual speaker that was also crossing the border.
Again, I heard from him how Mongolians dislike Chinese and he suggested that I should just tell people that I am from New York to avoid confusion since they might not be aware of the difference between China and Taiwan.
We passed a huge rainbow arch - the "country gate" - and crossed the border rather effortlessly to the Mongolian town of Zamyn-Uud. All of a sudden I found myself unable to understand anything anyone said or even read the signs.
The trains were full due to the border closing, so I couldn't get a soft sleeper, but I got a cheap hard sleeper that only cost about $6 US dollars for a 15 hour ride. And I was on my way.
No comments:
Post a Comment