Tag Archives: Travel

Yak Festival

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In honor of Emma’s departure1, Brian, Emma, and I went to a Yak Festival2 with another teacher, Tsetsegbadam and her family. The Yak Festival was held in Yolin Am, a famous canyon in the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains. Yolin Am is always a nice place to visit but is especially fun in October-June when it is filled with ice.

When we got there we found out that we were too late to see the dance and music concert put on by our students (you can’t ever get anywhere in a land without roads or signs without getting lost a few times) but we were there for the “yakky activities”. First they herded all the yaks into the field area

and then, after making teams, the games began. We didn’t totally understand everything that went on but the first contest required teams to herd and rope a yak, flip it on its side, shear it, and then turn the yak hair into rope. It was very impressive.

It was also fun to see all the cute baby yaks. This one was 1 day old!

After watching the yaks for a bit, eating lunch, and hanging with Margad, a 5th grader from our school, we went on a walk in the canyon.

The ice was impressively thick in places and oddly enough melts from the bottom up.

While Emma and I stayed in the canyon, Brian went up to the top of a grassy hill

where in August 2008 Evan Lattimore, the grandson of famed Mongolist Owen Lattimore, left his grandfather’s watch as a memorial. Since then every time Brian visits Yolin Am, he climbs the mountain to check on the watch. While the rocks were moved around, most likely by the wind, the watch was still there along with an old Mongolian coin.

Brian rebuilt the stone cairn on the watch (8) and hopefully it will be there for many years to come.

  1. 1.Much to our sadness Emma the Peace Corps Volunteer left Hanhongor on the 27th forever. We miss you and wish you all the luck in the world.
  2. I should point out that until I went to the Yak festival I didn’t realize there were any yaks in Omnogobi. In my defense I believe the entire yak population of Omnogobi was at the festival.

Trip to Tsogt Tsetsii Soum

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During the school break in late January, the school teachers took a work trip to a nearby town that has a lot of mining, and thus a lot of money for things like a brand new school. Now, a work trip in America might involve a car ride with 2 or 3 coworkers or a plane trip to a neighboring state. You stay at a mid-rate hotel and attend a conference or meetings. This is what a work trip in the Mongolian countryside is like.

8:30-scheduled departure time. After waiting for one van and then another van and then a missing teacher we left at 9:30.

9:40 A.M. While still within sight of town we stopped due to our first flat tire. 10:00 A.M. back on the road.

10:15 A.M. Stopped for our second flat tire. In order to stay warm while waiting outside in -15F temps the teachers in my van decided to play the Mongolian version of duck duck goose. I never really figured out the words and managed to abruptly end the game by falling spread eagle on the desert floor scrapping the skin on my chin off. The funniest part about this is that when I got home and showed Darkhuu my boo boo even before I could tell her what happened she asked me if I had been playing a game with the teachers. Apparently they are notorious for rowdy games!

10:30 A.M. Finally back on the “road” to Tsogt-Tsestii. We finally made it to our destination at 11:45 A.M. It only took us 2 hours and 15 minutes to travel 55 miles! After dropping off our meat and noodles at the local public school for the dorm cook to make our lunch from, we headed to the new private school “Мөрөөдөл” or “Dream” school.

The school is temporarily housed in the first floor of one of the new apartment buildings being built by Tavan Tolgoi, the large coal mine located about 8 kilometers from town. Eventually there will be hundreds of new apartments, and brand new public/private school and kindergarten, and numerous stores and parks. They are currently in the first stage of building

but some lucky families have already moved into new apartments.

The school is small but nice and has much higher quality furniture and electronic equipment than our school. The director told us all about the present school as well as the plans for the future much larger school they will start building this spring. We then took a tour of the classrooms and met some of the teachers.

The English language room was especially nice–not only because the teacher had a television in her room which she used to show language videos and such, but because they are one of the selected schools in Mongolia that are piloting the new Cambridge system English materials. Even just a quick glance at the books showed that they are much better than the books I am teaching from and are highly integrated with listening, speaking, acting, and audio visual activities.

Sadly the rest of the schools won’t get the system until 2014, so until then I am stuck teaching my 9th graders, who live in a town with basically no electricity and internet, lessons on internet shopping and using ATM machines.

2:00 P.M. We headed on over to the headquarters of Tavan Tolgoi mines and had a safety briefing in their very nice office. We then boarded a bus, all decked out in safety gear, for a tour of the mine.

We were not allowed to take pictures in the mine unfortunately but I wish I could have. The place was much larger than I had remembered and amazingly dirty. (here is a view from the outside taken a few years ago)

While most workers live in apartments or gers in town, it appeared that some people live in gers within the confines of the mine. The gers were pitch black in color due to the constant coal dust in the air. I don’t know how anyone could live there. The bus drove us around the mine pit and we got out at a lookout. They mine and process an area the size of a football field everyday!

3:30 P.M. We left behind our hard helmets and headed back to town for lunch at the public school. We also took a little tour of the school. Tsogt Tsestii, because of the mine, has grown in leaps and bounds the last few years so the school population has exploded. Where as my school has one group of students per grade, they had 4-5 groups. Their school building was also much more rundown than ours so they truly are in need of a new school. As much as I wish Hanhongor had a fancy new school I don’t wish a mine, horrible population growth, or the loss of community on our sweet little town.

5:00 P.M After a few stops and starts for vodka with friends alongside the road, we left town and headed to Baran Naraa another, smaller coal mine, located northwest of our town. We had another safety training and then got into our vans for a mine tour. As we were there after the sun had set we got to see them working under floodlights. Both mines were very professionally run, accessible and accommodating to public visitors, and eager to show how they benefit the people of Mongolia. While the environmental impact of these mines is yet to be seen at least they seem to be starting off in the right direction.

8:00 P.M. After a dinner of chicken breasts, french fries, and a green salad (!) at the mine we headed back, getting home around 10 P.M.

To recap my work trip in the Gobi Desert:

Mines visited: 2

Hard hats worn: 2

Schools visited: 2

Vodka shots drunk: 4

Flat tires: 2

Scrapped chins: 1

It was a great trip!

Quick trip to Korea

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On our way back to Mongolia we had a scheduled 34 hour layover in Korea. We got into Incheon airport around 4 in the morning, and after going through immigration we immediately made our way to the airport 7-11 and stocked up on teas, onigiri, and all sorts of sweet and salty Korean snacks. We spent the next few hours until the rest of the airport opened exploring the airport and stopping to refill on snacks every 30 minutes or so. The Incheon airport is one of the best in the world, and no wonder.  Where else can you see a 3-D lighted paper-mache model of a boy flying a kite?

From the airport were able to book our hotel room, get a free shuttle to and from the airport to the hotel, and organized a 5 hour bus tour to Seoul.

The bus trip took us to Seoul which is about an hour from the airport. The area between the city and airport seemed to be a mix of industrial areas and scrub brush nature with a lot of fog mixed in. In Seoul we walked a bit around downtown next to a recovered and rebuilt river that flows right through the middle of the city.

The city was clean, open, and quieter than I had expected. There were also some lovely pieces of art.

We then went to Gyeongbokgung Palace, a large, multi building palace in the middle of downtown Seoul which was built in the 14th century. We got to see a number of the buildings as well as the changing of the guard ceremony. While the palace was lovely, I did wonder how comfortable it was in the winter. Seemed pretty drafty to me!

A super fancy water fountain

The main entrance gate

Details of the buildings

And the obligatory peace sign photo

Our last stop in Seoul was for lunch and a bit of shopping in a tourist district downtown. As always the food was amazing, and we bought an assortment of wooden and metal chopsticks.

We will definitely be heading back to Korea for a real vacation in the near future. First stop on my list: the Korean Folk History Museum. You can watch them make kimchi the old fashioned way!