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Chloe, day - who knows, who cares, time has lost all meaning, all I know is that it's august.
Ah the sweet smell of pollution.... Yes, we are in China...Xi'an in fact, and you probably didn't even know we'd left Mongolia yet! Off to see the terracotta warriors tomorrow, which is quite exciting, although a little bit less so considering they've actually been all the way to England and back, but hey.
So, back to where we left off - as you have probably guessed by now Internet has been a wee bit of a problem recently (it's a long story - well, several long stories actually) - hence why it's taken so long to write...
So, since we last spoke we have; been on a tour for 7 days in Mongolia, both been sick, spent way more time than anyone could ever want on public transport, and spent lots of monies which we shouldnt have......
So, the tour in mongolia was really good -apart from the fact that just before we were about to leave on tour to central mongolia Tom got really sick from eating something at the mongolian bbq! Which is american owned!! In case you were wondering mongolian bbq isn't really mongolian - mongolians dont really grow and even attest to not liking vegetables! Plus all the sauces are chinese/japanese... However the 'fat sheep tail' was definitely mongolian, and probably what made tom sick..... It was only some mild food poisoning an he seemed to have recovered so we left the next day in our russian van into the Gobi desert and 8 lake area with 2 other couples -one spanish, one polish. We had our own guide who translated and cooked and a loveable driver called Pontska, and spent most nights sleeping in gers (traditional mongolian felt houses) and some nights in tents in the wilderness. we spent one whole day on horses -which tom loved and I hated, who knew you couldnt wear thongs whilst horseriding??? My bum hurt so bad afterwards I could barely walk for 3 days straight and I have the scars to prove it! (Though i won't.) As usual I was ill-equipped for the hiking, but I made it through... what a trooper.... The scenery was pretty amazing, and Mongolia is so sparsely populated that you can walk for miles and not see anything or anyone which was actually pretty nice. I won't say the food was amazing, because it wasnt! Definitely had my fill of mutton for the next few years i'd say... Also tried milk (and vile cheese) from about every animal going. mmmmm.
After the tour we headed back to UB, saw some temples etc... you know how it is. Then on the last day (just as I was about to write a blog entry)everywhere (cafe's, shops, restaurants, internet cafes(!) shut in the middle of the afternoon as Mongolia won it's first ever gold medal in the olympics! Everyone was going absolutely crazy - there were fireworks, lots of drinking, shouting, people standing up in convertibles waving flags and cruising down the main drag at extremely high speeds, as if Mongolia's roads weren't bad enough.... trying to cross them in broad daylight with the green man on is still a life threatening experience, believe me. Everyone was coming over and hugging and hi-fiveing us, it was hilarious!
After all the excitement we were up at 6am the next morning for our train to Beijing, which was pretty uneventful apart from me being sick randomly, and spending 6 hours at the border. We were a bit worried about beijing, as someone, I won't mention any names but it might be a person called tom croft, booked our hostel for the WRONG MONTH and dorm prices were up to about 30 quid per person per night! But we managed to find a nice little hotel for 15 a night which wasnt so bad.... I let Tom go off and do the sights while I napped which worked out pretty nicely.Beijing was pretty cool, way cleaner, sunnier and generally better in every way than I remember though! Wheres the - smoggy, prone to flooding and horrendous traffic jams - Beijing i know and love? People were going crazy with the olympics, everyone was buying, selling or wearing, I love beijing t-shirts, banners, stickers and face paints and smothering their kids in it too. good stuff. Unfortunately we didnt make it to any olympic games as we couldnt afford it, but we did however get to see them everywhere on TV- in the tube, taxis, bars, restaurants, our hotel room.... Bah, sick of the olympics now!
OOoh also, we might just be famous! Had not one, but TWO NBC film crews video us at the night market, asking us - it must be said- pretty dull questions, and I think some of the chinese people near us actually thought we were famous and started videoing/taking pics of us like crazy! But even without the film crew you can still catch people taking sneaky pictures of us all the time, and even following us to do so...!
After Beijing we got the bus (which was a mistake) to Xi'an, and got stuck for 6 hours in traffic. The sleeper bus at first looked really comfy but after 16 hours it really wasn't and the non stop chinese 'pop' music was horrendously loud, and the videos were verging on porn by the time we got off. You wouldn't see that on the megabus!
So, now we're in Xi'an, staying in a relatively nice room - we have air con, a TV, and a computer with the net in our room - all for about 1.60 a night! Although the bathroom is a bit on the skanky side... My chinese is coming along quite nicely if I do say so myself! After this we're on to Nanjing, huangshan, hangzhou and finally shanghai! Hopefully will be able to write back sooner next time - practically all good websites are banned in China -and thats if you can find internet after the governments been on a crackdown.
That'll do for now! I have bored you enough!
Lots of love,
Chloe (and Tom)
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