FNQ Sunsets!

Word of the week!

Guest blogger!

As we have many like minded travel friends, we thought it would be fun to share some of their adventures. To kick off; our very first guest blogger is Mathew Stein aka the legendary Steiny!

I should have gone to jail!

As the pack of dogs encircled me, barking viciously and uniformed men mounted on horses berated me in short impenetrable sentences, I remembered having two clear thoughts. Firstly, we should definitely not have squeezed through that chain link fence an hour ago. And secondly, I wonder if we’ll get to see the Mongolian President’s house.

Distressing as the dogs might have ordinarily been, on this particular day they were oddly farcical. This was partly due to the fatigue I was feeling having already walked forty kilometres and partly due to the inevitability of the scene now before me.

Eleven hours earlier, while drinking some particularly milky and even more salty, tea, I sat down with my hiking guide to speak to her about the day’s route. We were not far from the summit of Bogdkahn Uul in the Khentii Mountains just outside Ulaanbaatar and my pre-trip research had revealed that the hike to and across the rocky summit (about 2500m) was a dramatic one. We had been walking for the last few days and had agreed to summit the mountain on our final day before descending into a valley that would lead both to the capital and into some well-deserved rest and relaxation time. As I finished the salt lick that was my tea, I was excited by the dramatic peaks and valleys that were ahead. Prayer flags, tiny Buddhist shrines perched impossibly on rocky outcrops and pure streams of mountain water lay in wait. I closed my eyes in silent reverence for this place. I was beginning to understand why Buddhism had spread so quickly through this nation. Both the religion and the region radiated tranquillity.

My moment of tranquillity was short-circuited however, by memories of the rest of my pre-trip research which had warned hikers that upon reaching the summit of Bogdkahn Uul, numerous valleys radiated out like fans and a few of them are the private grounds of the President of Mongolia. Hikers should carefully select the ‘right’ valley to drop into after summiting less their descent will end with a chain link fence, signs in Cyrillic sternly reading “Prohibited” and “Trespassers will be fired upon” and a return hike up the summit of the mountain to select a different valley.

I did not know which valleys belonged to the President, and as it turned out, neither did my guide. I did not know how far we had to hike in order to reach the summit, neither did my guide. Evidently in Mongolia the vagaries of travelling overland such as distance and direction are routinely left to the horses people ordinarily travel on - a legacy I suppose of the fearsome Mongolian hordes that routed and conquered great swathes of the world in the thirteenth century on nothing more than horseback and a fearsome reputation. Unfortunately, we did not have any such noble steeds.

As the morning wore on and our hiking boots wore a path through the shrubs, I reminded my guide that we needed to be careful after reaching the peak. Maybe it was her stubborn hospitality that caused her to casually wave her hand in my direction as if I was being unnecessarily anxious or maybe it was her genuine lack of knowledge about exactly what was coming in the next hundred metres let alone what might be coming in the next few kilometres, either way, we both hiked nearly forty kilometres over the next ten hours and we were both walking this route for the very first time. Sometimes we were actually on a path; this gave me hope that at least someone had once been this way before. Most of the rest of the time we were up to our hips in dense bushland, walking where I doubt any other living soul had ever stepped before.

Upon reaching the top of the mountain, exhausted after a challenging hike, we debated at length which direction to head and therefore which valley to drop into. I was now plainly aware that I had about as much experience hiking in this environment as my guide did; that experience being exactly equal to zero, so I was confident in asserting an arbitrary downward direction and pressing forward.

 It was with some inevitability then, that a few kilometres down the mountain we were met with that exact chain link fence, foreboding barbed wire and Cyrillic “Prohibited” sign that I had read about just months before. What happened next however completely surprised me. I had already turned around and begun the slog back up to the top of the mountain when I spun around and saw my guide produce a pair of small wire cutters from her backpack and begin to snip open the chain link fence. I raced over to her gesticulating wildly in the direction of the signs in Cyrillic and repeating the word “prohibited, prohibited” as though I had a commanding understanding of the complex symbols and she was the naïve tourist.  

She told me bluntly that she was not walking back up the mountain. At worst, she hoped we would be arrested and taken to prison back in the capital. At best, I suppose she hoped to blame it all on the stupid Australian tourist who made her do it. Either way, she was done walking. If I’m honest with myself, so was I. It was a very hot day and we had run out of water quite some time ago. Capitulation is easy in the end.

And I laughed. I actually laughed as I pulled apart that gap in the chain link fence, squeezed myself through it and trespassed into the President’s private compound. No alarms sounded. No shots were fired. I thought, as a fool does, that we might actually get away with this.

I heard the dogs before I saw them. This is actually far more terrifying as you know they are coming but you don’t know which direction they are coming from, or how far away they are. As it happened, they arrived from every direction and formed a circle around us.

In my mind, the guide and the guards would simply exchange words to explain away the unfortunate series of events, they would purse their lips in my direction, I would look suitably chastised and they would escort us off the property. I was less than thrilled, however, when my guide simply pointed at me and burst into tears. This was not ideal. Every second that passed, I looked less an innocent and playfully mischievous tourist and more a kidnapper, emblematic of the brutally oppressive West.

Cometh the hour, cometh the bribe. I decided that nothing signposted unlucky tourist quite like photographs from my travels. As a tactic, it certainly wasn’t as blatant as offering money, but I did think it was a lot less likely to offend anyone and it just might be sweet enough a gesture that the guards would wave the whole thing off as an unfortunate event. With that I grabbed my camera and showed the guards the photographs that I had taken a week or so earlier in an orphanage I had been volunteering in. The very same orphanage that one of the guards, who had now dismounted from his horse, had grown up in.

 Belly laughs now filled the Mongolian President’s valley and the dogs, which moments ago were frothing with rage, were now panting and playing on the ground. The guard spoke animatedly with the other guards, hopefully about how lovely and charming I was, but more likely about his experiences growing up in the orphanage. My guide was now seeking to remove the knife she had placed firmly in my back just moments before by hugging me and slapping her thighs with laughter. I decided in that moment that I would not tip her.

As I sat in the back of a secured vehicle bound for down town Ulaanbaatar, I recalled my two earlier thoughts. Yes, I’m glad I squeezed through that chain link fence as I received a priceless and frankly unbelievable tale in return and; Yes, I did see the Mongolian President’s house, in fact, I got driven through his front gate!

A small budget can make for big stories. (China, November 2009) - Emilia Sinton-Stein

Anyone who’s travelled for a great length of time appreciates the importance of sticking to a budget.

So imagine my excitement when my Shangai hostel advertised a 3-day Yangtze River cruise for a quarter of the price that I had seen online…what a bargain! That may have rung alarm bells for most people, but having spent some time in China, staying in fabulous private hostel rooms for $10 a night and eating great meals for $3 a plate, I was now adjusting my expectations of the value of goods and services. The only stipulation by the cruise was that I had to share my cabin, which I was OK with, as I love any chance to meet fellow travellers. 

The day of departure drew upon me, and it did not concern me that I was the only westerner on the bus to the port. Nor did it did not concern me that our boat was the smallest, least impressive of those at the port (though those 5 star luxury vessels looked mighty appealing!). With a handwritten, scrap piece of paper as my ‘ticket’, I made my way to my cabin to meet my cabin mate.

…correction, cabin ‘mates’. Three middle-aged Chinese men must have seen my impression of a deer in headlights as I quickly retreated out of the cabin. I tracked down a female attendant to express my concern that I had been assigned the wrong cabin.

“But you must share with Chinese” she explained.

“Chinese…yes” I replied. “Man….no!”

Thankfully she relented, and I was given my own cabin. I’m confident that she assigned me the worst cabin as punishment, but it was the end of a long day, and I could hear passengers next door having what I assume was a sumo-wrestling match, so I was grateful. I simply plugged up the 10cm x 30cm hole in the exterior wall with a blanket, and used the extras from other beds to help keep me warm in the <10 degree foggy temperature.  Feasting on my 2min noodles and staring out to the Chinese countryside, I was ready to make the best of my situation.

The next morning I discovered that I was the only female passenger, and the only one who was not part of the ‘corporate group’ who were all travelling together. Three days away from wife and family equates to middle aged businessmen gone wild. In retrospect, their behaviour was not very different from a excited kids on a school trip, except that the drinking, smoking and gambling are allowed. Every day they giggled at the ‘odd man out’ who had to sit beside me on our day trip excursions, and on more than one occasion I saw them double-take at the other boats  full of white westerners and look back at me with a look that I perceived to be “why are you with us, and not with them?”.  However, like most school trips, a sense of solidarity builds over time, and when a group of us got separated from our tour on day three, they did not leave me to fend for myself…but did try some miming and grunting to indicate our predicament and lead us back to our boat safely.

The scenery was beautiful and the excursions were…not translated to English, so I can’t be entirely sure of what ruins/palaces/sites I saw…therefore, my story about the Yangtze is not really about the river at all.  

Gypsy's muse!

In the world kitchen!

Thought we could start off this new segment with a tribute to the Chinese New Year aka the year of the wooden horse! A strong and stable year ahead.

Chicken sweet corn soup.

Ingredients
2 finely shredded chicken fillets,
4  chopped spring onions,
1 sliced brown onion
4 cups of water,
2 teaspoons soy sauce,
1 teaspoon of crushed ginger,
2 chicken stock cubes,
1 beaten egg,
1 large can of creamed corn.

Method

Put shredded chicken in saucepan with water and add sliced onion. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Add everything else bar egg and bring to boil. Simmer for 3 minutes then stir in egg and serve.               美  味

Thanks to Michelle Long for the great Chinese banquets of years gone by!

Blogger's books!

We read this book quite a few years ago and it became a favourite of ours. It is such a sad, emotional story that empathises the effects of war on the common man. Set in Germany in the late 1930s, this book is truely powerful. Allies and enemies alike are all victims of the power hungry games of our world leaders.
We watched the recently made film version of this story last night and were emotionally stunned all over again. Fanastic adaptation of a brilliant book.