Eating Vegan in Mongolia: Ulaan Baatar is Surprisingly Veg-Friendlyby Randi / July 26, 2017
After our time in Ulaan Baatar, we were eager to get out in the countryside and desert, because everyone said the best part of Mongolia was outside the city. Not hard to believe! Our 7-day trip seemed to cover a good mix of the country, not just lake like some did, not just Gobi desert like most others did. I knew it would be roughing it, but I was okay with that, because I figured it’s still a tourist company and they’ll make sure we at least have our basic needs covered. Also, I went to overnight camp for 9 years, so I’m a champ at roughing it.
Turns out going to one of the most established Jewish overnight camps with a bunch of JAPs, pretty good plumbing, and private tennis instruction is not the same as ‘roughing it’.
We booked a weeklong tour with Sunpath, one of the most popular tour arrangers, run by a small Mongolian lady named Doljma whom we referred to as Grape Leaves for obvious reasons. Since our friend Sivani could no longer join us, it would just be the two of us unless Grape Leaves could find a solo traveler to take the third spot. We would have an English speaking guide and a driver, and would see a huge amount of the country. We were eager to have a week being super active – hiking, climbing, horseback riding, walking a lot. I was excited. I was naive.
To cope, I wrote diary entries every day of the trip. These are their stories.
one of our ger camps
DAY 1
A car picked us up at our hostel and drove us to the Sunpath hostel and office for checking in. The parking lot in the back of the hostel was overflowing with tourists, Mongolian drivers, those Soviet-style awful gray vans, and a bunch of Mongolian near-teenagers who were the English-speaking guides. Chaos abounded, with people just sitting on the ground awaiting instruction. After like 30 minutes of talking to the other tourists and hearing 80 different people say some version of “I think we just wait here?”, Doljma finally came outside and assigned guides and drivers to various vehicles and then moved in the correct tourists depending on the tour they booked. It took forever, and everything kept changing so I just gave up trying to follow the disorganization. I went inside the hostel to use the bathroom, and the state of that hostel should have alerted me to the state of the week to come. Confused-looking tourists were pouring out of it, shoes covered the entire hallway (I had to just step on shoes, there was no other floor), and there was one single tiny bathroom – toilet and shower and sink, all in there with no others – for everyone staying there to share. I was so happy that they hadn’t had room for us to stay here. I would have freaked out if every time I had to pee I had to wait for the shower line to finish.
Finally, we got our driver and our guide and our car – luckily, we had the one black SUV in the lot full of Russian vans, so we were excited. Seatbelts! Airbags! Our guide introduced himself (to protect his identity I’ll call him…Guido, get it because guide) and was wearing a Temple University hat! I was like whaaat that’s where I’m from! He got it as a gift from a supervisor, he said. I thought it was a good sign. I guess I used to be an optimist.
So, this is the point in the story where I warn you that if you want to turn back, if you don’t have the stomach for it, you should go now. No hard feelings.
Otherwise, the rest of you are going to hear about my diarrhea.
Of course my body decided early on that it hated Mongolia and figured, “hey, THIS is the right place to get a strong case of Travelers’” Yes, the time leading up to a week of camping and long car rides is EXACTLY the right time to go absolutely berserk, body, good job! Thanks for that! You’re not a total shitbag at all! Both figuratively and literally!
I was nervous, but I was feeling relatively okay that morning and figured I could hold it together by sheer strength of will. I’ve been doing without television for a month now; I could use that same mentality to CONTROL MY INSIDES, RIGHT? No you idiot you can’t. Luckily for the few hours outside the city, we saw enough gas stations with outhouses that I was okay. But they quickly became, like, REAL country living outhouses, like not actually worthy of a title using the word ‘house’. These were delicately balanced planks of wood, with doors that didn’t close. Soon, at another gas station, I used my first toilet hole with no door. It faced away from the road, thankfully, and faced into an endless field…of goats. My insides exploded while approximately 150 goats stared and bahhed at me. Do goats bah? I can’t even remember the sound a goat makes. I think those moments, when I was sick while making eye contact with a wild goat, will prove pivotal in my life.
After maybe four or five hours of driving and a line of toilet pits ever decreasing in safety and cleanliness, we stopped for lunch. I was actually hungry – I hadn’t eaten and my body was apparently shedding itself from the inside out since it had no food to shed – and eager to stop for a decent amount of time.
The restaurant Guido had planned to go to was closed. For Naadam, probably. His failure to check in advance that a place we just drove five hours to would be open for us was the first sign that he was a total diddadoof.
He decided we would eat at a khuushuur shack on the same bit of expanse, and asked if I had snacks since he knew I didn’t eat meat. Great first showing at what kind of guide you’ll be! I had a bag of really weird breadsticks we found in UB that somehow tasted like the fried noodle things that American Chinese restaurants will put on your table before you order. I ate some of those. It wasn’t a smart move. I used the nearby toilet shack hell hole while holding the door closed with one hand and trying to get my toilet paper out of my purse with the other hand. A small girl peed outside the crack in the door while I was in there.
You’d think maybe the worst was over, at least for the day, but you would be wrong. The horrible feeling of my entire body was no match for the aural onslaught the driver caused with his horrible music. He listened to CDs of I THINK songs written to help people learn English, like ESL music edition. The lyrics were very simple sentences, the musical equivalent of See Spot Run or donde esta la biblioteca, and Guido and driver were alllll about them, singing along kind of proud that they knew the words. It was kind of nice to see that, but the music was still bad. It got worse – they started playing famous songs that I knew the words to like Abba’s greatest hits, Hotel California, and an impressively annoying song called Hands Up that I remember playing at my brother’s Bar Mitzvah. The kind of songs that you suffer through without too much actual suffering because they’ll be over soon, but knowing the words makes it worse. But Driver played each CD three times in a row. I was screaming inside. Every time Hotel California came on (6 times that ride), they would both sing along with slightly incorrect words and looked like they were having the goddamn time of their lives. I was full on batty by the end, singing along to Abba’s ‘Mamma Mia’ with the obvious lyrics change – “Diarrhea! Here we go again!”
First night ger camp
Soon, I really had to find a toilet hell hole and asked Guido if we could stop as soon as we see one just like in the next hour. Not an unreasonable request right? We were still sort of near stuff. His response was “Or we can find somewhere for you to hide?” No dude we are in the open hilly countryside we haven’t seen a tree in a week let alone bush enough to hide in.
The super long day of driving finally ended at Karakorum, the ancient capital of Mongolia that is now just ancient city walls enclosing a monastery and some dry grass. It was cool to see, considering the history, but I could not enjoy it when I felt so awful. And we’ve seen so many darn temples.
Luckily, our ger camp for the night was just a few minutes away. Gers are the Mongolian version of yurts, round tent-like structures with beds around the sides and poles in the middle holding everything up. Usually there is a stove in the center and a chimney pipe, for heat. This first ger camp is actually nice – there are showers, sinks, and wifi in the main house, where the kitchen was. After the kitchen staff made me an omelet for dinner (no thanks), they then cooked my cabbage which Guido had already given them so like what were they gonna do with it, keep it for themselves? It’s my cabbage! Along with way too much white rice (but I guess that was good for me to have in my condition), it was a decent dinner.
There were lots of other travelers, and one told me it was her ninth night out in the country. She said this was the nicest ger camp yet, and I agreed without too much thought – it has wifi! I don’t expect that at the others! But I didn’t guess just how different the rest would be.
DAY 2
We drove the few minutes to the Karakorum museum, which is a UNESCO site (or the whole thing is) and had a few cool things, like a heavy passport thing like Marco Polo would have used, and so much information about Chinggis Khan and various Mongolian tribes. It was short and we followed another group’s English speaking guide around, so it was my kind of museum. And they had a decent toilet, which I used many times. We drove a few hours to another deserted and desert-looking monastery (COOL THESE AREN’T GETTING SUPER BORING) before we met a Russian van on the side of a random road. We were picking up our third group member to take Sivani’s place. Can you even believe, the door opened and out came the Chilean from the Ulan Ude to Ulaan Baatar train! The one who was sleeping on my bed when I came in but turned out to be nice! So that is super lucky, at least he’s friendly and we know him and despite his saying he came from the Gobi and hadn’t showered in five days, he didn’t smell that bad. And he wears tank tops everyday so that really is something. Everyone in tank tops smells bad! What’s his secret?
Next stop was the incredibly important sacred monument called THE PENIS STONE. Not kidding, the sign even said that in English. People were praying to it, for fertility. I can’t make this shit up.
PENIS
We then drove another hour or five to lunch, to this restaurant where we were the only people and it took an hour to make food. Why did we come so far for this particular place? I was given rice and potatoes and carrots and a few pieces of pickle. I literally count zero of that as vegetable. Then, after lunch, we drove for more than four hours to a waterfall. When I say drove, I’m using the word loosely. Now that we were well into the outback, the roads disappeared. We were maneuvering the car over legit rocks, hills, mud, and PONDS. Remember the Olkhon Island minibus drive? Those roads were better than these. These were not roads. This was just off-roading on rocky untouched landscape, going down one way and finding it was unpassable and having to backtrack and forge another path. Holy crap, I’m sure some of you (SIVANI) think this sounds fun, but imagine it for 8 hours daily. I have never been tossed around a car so much for so long. Wanna hear the funniest thing? This whole region we are driving through is called Orkhon Valley. Literally one letter off from the previous hellscape. Is there an Onkhon or an Odkhon located somewhere because if so make sure I don’t go there.
yes we went through this
Guido kept saying we’re almost there, we’re almost there. We were never almost there. In fact, we didn’t arrive there at all. We arrived first at the shittiest ger camp I could have imagined in my nightmares. It’s not even that there was no bathroom. It’s that there was just one hole in the ground outhouse except it was tarp on the sides with no roof. What happens if it’s raining. And this one hole was for a camp of like 10 gers, with 4-8 people in each. That’s a lot of people. The tarped up hole was swarming with more flies than I’ve ever seen in my life. The hellhole was far from our ger and in the worst condition I’ve seen yet. There were no showers and, worse, no sinks. I was supposed to wash my hands to take my contacts out…how? Oh with bottled water, precious bottled water.
On the drive we saw this, so at least some semblance of natural beauty. It’s a cliff they used to push monks off of so it’s called something like dead bodies ravine or something RIDIC
I couldn’t handle all that at once so I focused on the fact that we didn’t actually go to the sight we were supposed to see. I found Guido and was like wait I thought we were going to a waterfall. Guido said well first we can try mare’s milk and relax in the ger and ride horses. Um. F that. I said dude no let’s do the only f-ing thing we were supposed to do today! But after we unloaded I couldn’t find him. At 6:30 pm, we were still supposed to be seeing the waterfall before dinner but he was supposed to be making dinner himself (from now on he is our cook). But he is hanging with his friend in another yurt. This is my nightmare. There are ants all over my bag. Hell there are ants all over me. I care more about my stuff though. Fing hell. It’s so hot I can’t keep my eyes open. My skin burning from close-feeling sun. And the dust is what they foretold in Interstellar, the Casey Affleck dust lung disease. Tube snot is nothing, Londoners. Since arriving in Mongolia I’ve had black soot and blood coming out my nose all day and night. It’s so dry. Tomorrow Guido said the drive to the hot springs is 300 kilometers. 300. It took all day to go 70 on these roads. He said the roads tomorrow will be better, but that’s not exactly hard to achieve. Anything is moving in the right direction; it’s just a matter of how much of a change we’re talking about. I think I’m gonna spend all of the fall in NYC to make up for this.
The waterfall, called the Ulaan Tsutgalan, was pretty at least, with a rocky as hell path to get down to the water’s edge that I didn’t bother trying because I didn’t have the mindset of dealing with that after this day. I put my feet in the top section though. Hope I don’t contract more disease. Maybe they will fight each other and cancel out.
Dinner was another plate of rice with some of my canned beans and canned vegetables. It was fine. Guido knows how to work a camping stove (secret: onions and garlic). At least they are able to feed me. They used the rest of that canned stuff and mixed it with mutton for the boys. They are already sick of mutton. I saw that Guido had some of his raw meat stored in an old 2 liter water bottle. Have fun joining me tomorrow, boys.
At night, when I had to pee my usual every-90-minutes, it was so dark and I was so broken. It was so far to our shitshack that I just peed right outside the ger, out in the open. I’m sorry to the two cows who were watching. But I don’t care anymore. You hear that? I DON’T CARE ANYMORE.
Tonight marks the first night in years that I didn’t floss.
DAY 3
Well maybe I care a little.
We left at 9am to get to the Tsenkher hot springs by afternoon. Remember how Guido promised that the roads would be better? LOLLL. They were the same, except this time there were more little ponds and lakes to ford! Is it bad to ford in a Toyota? Thank goodness my stomach has decided to stay in one piece since yesterday morning, so praise to the Mongolian god of intestinal tracts for at least removing that challenge from this experience.
But the drive was insane horrible. And so flipping long. So far, it’s just like 8 hours of driving per day. We thought we were going to be physically active this week, HA. We are sitting in the car all day just to get to some crap camp, then waking up to get back in the car for the same. The drive is just constant tumbling over rocks and plowing through water. I was so upset but you know it’s bad when Z is also upset about it and talking about scrapping the next four days and just going back to UB. It’s a tempting thought but I don’t know if two more days of driving to get back to city and missing anything worthwhile along the way is worth it. Also we’d have to find lodging and we’d lose money so we are stuck.
every ten minutes honking our way through another herd
For the past two days, driver has been listening to a CD of Russian pop songs, which we liked at first but the 7th go round was absolute torture. I know all the words now and can’t get them out of my head! So I put my headphones in and blasted some angsty Tori Amos. Of course after a listen to The Great Comet’s best song, “Dust and Ashes”, singing my version: “Is this how I die…carsick and filthy, wanting salad . Is this how I die…nauseous and dehydrated, sick with poo.” If you knew the song you’d laugh because I barely changed what the real lyrics sound like. Ugh my shoes smell so bad! But I must say testing various hiking shoes was the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Last time I did a big active hiking trip I borrowed a friend’s boots. NEVER DO THAT! They didn’t have room for my bunions and I lost a toenail. Having proper shoes is so important. It’s a miracle my feet my poor poor feet are still functioning after all these miles. And precarious outhouse perching.
this kid watched as I went to an outhouse near the lunch restaurant
Anyway after an hour and half of being thrown from one side of the car to the other, I had to pee. I asked if we could keep a look out for a toilet. Toilet now means hole outhouse, of course Bathroom now does have is own definition. Oh how I miss a bathroom. Anyway there was nothing for miles and Guido said there wouldn’t be and he was right so they brought me to an abandoned dilapidated deserted and dying wooden building and I trekked through the unmown weeds and peed behind it. Just behind some decaying old shack. Oh how far I’ve fallen.
Two more hours of dehydration, nausea, and back pain (two vertebrae are extremely bruised from being tossed and thrown into the seat repeatedly it’s not fun) and I had to pee again. Guido said what about hiding in those trees? They were seedlings. The thinnest shortest little plants passing for trees you’ve ever seen literally the width of my finger and he wants me to “hide” behind it? LOLLL. I was like I’m not sure they can actually hide me but ummm and delayed the ms until we passed into a clearing with lots of ger camps that I was SURE would have an outhouse! They had to! Where were all those people going? Oh right in the open like I do now. The first thing we found was…I can’t even talk about it. Omg. Wait getting a cookie first. Ok it was a hole in the ground surrounded by a two foot high piece of fabric attached at a few two foot poles. On three sides. So it was pretty much peeing inside an outstretched hand towel. For all the world to see. The wooden planks to stand on were thin branches that creaked and moved. It was probably the worst ever. Worse than just being out in the open. So gross.
So, I am sure some people are like ‘but how wonderful is it to see another culture and how they live!’ And I’m sure people are thinking I’m being rude to them and disrespectful of their way of life. Maybe I am. But I am unwavering in my belief that would be better for most Mongol people and for the public health if their toilets were cleaner or existed at all and if hygiene was promoted and oh yeah sewage disposed of more appropriately. And it would be better for the people if roads were paved, and people’s cars didn’t break down or pop tires when they tried to drive to the next village. So many cars we saw were a mess or more often were stuck in the rock piles passing for roads. It’s treacherous. They have to pay for repairs and they lose time, which is usually losing money. A road, just one paved road in this valley, would boost tourism and save time so people actually want to be there and see things. It’s a mess and I’m not afraid to say that out of some way-too-common liberal traveler tendency to over-extol the virtues of every shithole they go to. It’s a real common annoying problem, ignorant in the other direction, for travelers to rain praise on a place for no reason other than that they’ve been there and think that exaggeratingly exalting the exotic makes them seem worldly. It just makes you a jerk. I’m being a jerk too but at least I’m honest.
So, I am sure some people are like ‘but how wonderful is it to see another culture and how they live!’ And I’m sure people are thinking I’m being rude to them and disrespectful of their way of life. Maybe I am. But I am unwavering in my belief that would be better for most Mongol people and for the public health if their toilets were cleaner or existed at all and if hygiene was promoted and oh yeah sewage disposed of more appropriately. And it would be better for the people if roads were paved, and people’s cars didn’t break down or pop tires when they tried to drive to the next village. So many cars we saw were a mess or more often were stuck in the rock piles passing for roads. It’s treacherous. They have to pay for repairs and they lose time, which is usually losing money. A road, just one paved road in this valley, would boost tourism and save time so people actually want to be there and see things. It’s a mess and I’m not afraid to say that out of some way-too-common liberal traveler tendency to over-extol the virtues of every shithole they go to. It’s a real common annoying problem, ignorant in the other direction, for travelers to rain praise on a place for no reason other than that they’ve been there and think that exaggeratingly exalting the exotic makes them seem worldly. It just makes you a jerk. I’m being a jerk too but at least I’m honest.
Anyway, so we are driving all f-ing day on these terrible rocks and mudslides and lakes, and we finally stop at an area with a lot of cars and tourists on some hill. This was about the time Guido said we should have arrived at the hot springs camp. A man came over and driver and he yell at each other for a while before we left and kept driving for like 30 mins. That’s when I said “Oh hey I thought we were almost there?” And he said yes but we have to go to a different camp with different hot springs because a Russian couple took our ger. We freaked out and were like first of all you weren’t going to tell us? And second are we not going where we signed up to go? He said no it’s the same place we were heading to the wrong camp. I mean jfc, is it that someone took our place or that you were going in the wrong direction? He said it was just the wrong direction and denied saying anything about another couple. Okay, so you guys don’t know where you’re going?? So who knows if we are in the right springs but whatever. We got here and we don’t have to get in the car until tomorrow. I can drink all the water (though we don’t have much left ugh) and eat food and best of all SHOWER! There’s a shower using hot spring water and it smells like eggs because it is, indeed, hot spring water but I don’t care I’m cleeeeean now. And that same building with the shower has three REAL toilets and SINKS! SINKS!!!! I wish we could stay here every night but I know tomorrow is back to a shithole shack. For now though, I’m clean and I got my bathing suit on and I’m gonna go springing. Then I’m gonna shower AGAIN and wash my disgusting hair! And then in the morning I’m gonna shower again!
(I forgot to take pictures of the hot springs)
THE VIEW FROM OUR GER AT THE HOT SPRINGS LOLOLOL
Guido made us lunch at 3pm of vegetable soup with potatoes and carrots and noodles. And seaweed. At least I’m getting iodine.
The hot springs were indeed incredibly hot but so enjoyable. They are just little jacuzzi-looking jawns just behind the bathroom building – which is, I am sad to report, a full 250 paces from our ger. I count every time. The first night was about 80, the second (awful) one was about 150. This is 250!! That is too far for middle of the night peeing! I guess that means we’re going right outside the door again.
It started raining, really heavily raining, that night, and the top part of our ger was open. Guido and a guide friend had to climb up on top of the ger to secure a tarp. Guido popped his head in and asked Z if he had any rope for tying it down. No we don’t have rope.
Dinner was finally my tofu cutlets that we found at a grocery store when we all went food shopping a few days ago to stock up on everything! They were good! With more potatoes and carrots, of course. And bread. Guido likes to give each of us at least like 8 slices of bread throughout the day. It’s ridiculous.
After dinner in a bit of silence, Z looked up at me and said “Why would I have any rope?” We died.
That night the people in the next ger were SO loud until about 3am, and they were outside talking (even though it was raining, beach umbrella sort of thing) so I had to keep trekking to the bathroom, back and forth, back and forth. If I wore one of those dumb watches I’d have hit my steps just from peeing.
DAY 4
After not much sleep but lots and lots of 250-step walks in the pouring rain (I pretty much just kept my anorak and boots on all night), I took my fourth shower in this place (one at arrival, a rinse after the hot springs, a full evening shower where I washed my hair, and the morning one. All smelled strongly of eggs, and I fear I will forever as well), ate a lot of peanut butter (we bought a jar the first day in the grocery store that I am on schedule to completely finish) and left for another day of driving. All day driving, this time to Great White Lake and Khorgo Crater. We would literally be driving all day, yet again, on crappy roads. Our lofty goals of this week being even more physically active than our city touring have proved laughable.
But this time was different because it started to storm! We had to drive these rocky hills in a freaking thunderstorm. Luckily we made it to the city of Tsetserleg and stocked up on the rest of the week’s food necessities. The produce section had 3 heads of sad cabbage and a box of kiwis. The parking lot of the market was the most chaotic mess of law-ignoring drivers and bikers going wherever they wanted, plus a whole string of cars with their trunks open and set up for BUTCHERY. There were 30 or so cars in a row with trunks all covered in dead bodies and blood, which I saw too much of before realizing what it was and looking away. And people were lining up to buy from them! That’s where they get their meat, instead of inside the shop! Sea Bass and Z were like…jfc is that where Guido is getting our meat???!!! #govegan
We stopped soon at another giant but empty restaurant for lunch where they take literally an hour to fry noodles. Why do we keep coming to these whack places?? We should go where other people actually eat! I wanna go where the people are! Also how do these giant places not have toilets? Every time, they point me to a toilet hole around the block. Get your shit together.
After lunch, my god, it was actually a paved road to White Lake! Cannot believe!
My kidneys actually hurt from holding my pee for weeks now, it seems. On the way, we stopped at a camp so I could pee in a hole where the planks were literally covered with caked human feces, at least six months worth of buildup. And this was in a ger camp. I hope ours would be better that night.
Haha the paved roads didn’t last very long. In fact, the roads got so bad that we had to get out of the car and walk up a mountain while the driver went crazy trying to get up this.
Finally, we got to our next camp. It was a beautiful location, right on the lake, so that was lucky. But it was yet again a shitty place with one far toilet hole, no sink, just one hole for everyone in the 10 or so gers to share. That’s a lot of people in one shithouse.
The only difference was, we would stay here for two nights. Cool. Cool cool cool cool.
The boys swam while I went in the lake up to my knees. It sucks to not fully participate but if I am not able to shower again for four more days there’s no way I’m putting on a still-wet bathing suit and going into a dirty lake and then just being gross for four days. I am not voluntarily adding ‘yeast infection’ to my list of troubles.
mosquitoville
Guido is talking about his crush and when he first saw her and it is SO cute. I almost forgive him for being a diddadoof after this conversation. In what is probably my favorite translated phrase mix-up in the history of language, he said he saw her from across the room “and then I crushed it.” I almost threw up from trying not to laugh. I’m sure he heard the phrase ‘crushed it’ in recent slang but also knew the word ‘crush’ in the romantic context and just cleverly but incorrectly assumed they were related and that to crush it was the verb form like instead of ‘to develop a crush’. I’m obsessed.
He also is in the lake screaming about how he can’t see without his ‘googles’ and I am cackling at that too. Both things are too cute to correct.
weebly is too buggy for me to try to move this picture to day 3, where it belongs. doesn’t it look like the bridge it collapsing? felt that way too
There was another storm tonight, this one absolutely insane. The shithole is 140 steps from our ger, which isn’t as bad as others but it’s up a steep hill. And in this storm? Nah I peed outside the door again and still got soaked. Also, we had to fish out our mosquito-net head covers to sleep with, because the gers are swarming with mosquitoes. So fun.
DAY 5
Since it was still raining, and since we didn’t have to drive to our next awful camp, we had a lazy rainy morning. I tried to reread Walden for the first time in like 15 years, to try to relate to my surroundings more, but it just made me angry.
Guido brought us breakfast (fruit! canned but still! and 5 pieces of bread.) at 10am, and when he came to collect our plates (oh, after that first night’s dinner in a kitchen, all of our meals have just been on our beds. I hate nothing more than food in the bedroom soooo), he said lunch would be at 1pm. JFC we were like no that’s not necessary! Can we just go on the hike to the Khorgo Crater finally? But he does not do well with plans changing and begrudgingly pushed lunch back to 1:30pm. Lunch was actually good, rice of course and a succotash type thing, but like give us time to actually work up an appetite dude!
Finally we went on the hike up the crater, which was the best thing about the whole week. I hate sitting in a car, so sitting in a car for eight hours every day without doing any physical activity has been hell. Doing a decently challenging hike feels amazing. There were some scary bits around the lip of the crater at the top where we had to scramble but it was great.
I actually enjoyed myself for the first time in days.
The only super awful annoying thing was that a group of white men (the hippie dirty traveler type) were sitting on the lip of the crater and making paper airplanes and throwing them into the crater. Like, littering on one of the country’s most important sites. I don’t like this country but I’m not going to contribute to making it worse! Guido went up to them and asked them to please stop as this was a state monument. Repeat, a Mongolian citizen went up to a group of white tourists and asked them to stop littering in his country, please. The white douchehats replied, “it’s just like trees, man, it’s fine.” God grant me the confidence of mediocre white men, amiright? What a bag o’dicks. I said to Guido loud enough that the men knew I was talking to them, “god, white men really think they can do whatever the f they want anywhere in the world, huh?” I like to think that got to them but we know it didn’t. F-ing white men.
Back at the camp, we had more vegetable soup (mostly noodles oof) and saw to our delight that our Dutch friends from the long train journey in Siberia were now in the ger behind us! How crazy is that! The Mongolian traveler scene is pretty small, I guess! It was like pure joy to see familiar and kind faces.
Ugh my belly hurts so much. I can’t use the bathroom with all these people watching the path to the latrine pit from the chairs and tables they have set up outside their ger. And Guido and the other guides literally just set up an archery target 5 feet from the toilet hole. I mean. WTF. Now not only do I have to deal with every watching me try to make it up that hill, but I have to also dodge arrows from these idiotic other travelers and the group of 20 guys just standing around watching. Ughhh.
However, my unwillingness to trek to the outhouse 5x during the night paid off in one way, because when I was outside the door peeing at 12:30am, I looked up and saw the universe. I’m not kidding. Guys, I didn’t know there were that many stars. I’ve seen the usual suspects, but this night looked like a planetarium. I woke Z up and we both just stood there like, holy shit, is this what is out there? The sky was like a dome that was COVERED with billions and billions of lights that we could actually see. We clearly saw the Milky Way galaxy. If you had told me before that the Milky Way would be visible, I would have said ‘but how do you know which thingy it is?’ There was no questioning it here though – you could clearly see the swoosh plain as day. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I really didn’t know that the naked eye and just plain open sky could lead to such a sight. I did not know there were that many stars. IN THEIR MULTITUUUUDE.
It almost makes this whole week worth it.
I KNOW I KNOW IT ALL LOOKS BEAUTIFUL
DAY 6
Today is another 8 hour drive to the Semi-Gobi, a section of desert that looks more like what we imagine the Gobi to look like (sand dunes) than the actual Gobi does (it’s only 3% desert-y!). Guido and driver sang along to the worst music you could imagine. Sea Bass, trying to get them to turn it down, asked Guido what his favorite song was. Guido answered, I shit you not, with the following:
Guido: “My favorite song? Cash me outside.”
Sea Bass: “I don’t know that, how does it go?”
Guido: “Mm, mm, cash me outside” — JUST SPOKEN
Guido: “My favorite song? Cash me outside.”
Sea Bass: “I don’t know that, how does it go?”
Guido: “Mm, mm, cash me outside” — JUST SPOKEN
Again, nausea from trying not to laugh-cry.
MONGOLIA, in a nutshell. Nothing for miles and miles, except one shithouse.
But jesus christ, things got really unfunny soon. After four hours of driving (it was almost 1:30pm and we still hadn’t stopped for lunch), Guido and driver started yelling a lot in Mongolian and were yelling on the phone a lot to someone who I soon realized was Grape Leaves. Turns out, Doljma booked Sea Bass, who was leaving us to return to UB today, a bus ticket back at 2pm. A bus ticket. He had NO idea he was getting on a bus at 2pm, and Guido and driver had no idea that the bus was even at 2pm UNTIL IT WAS 1:30PM. Doljma just hadn’t told them the details, and NO one told Sea Bass. We were livid on his behalf but also – what kind of professional company operates like this? Driver started speeding beyond all belief because we had to go an hour’s distance in less than 30 minutes. It was so dangerous, and to know that the owner of the company who we paid a lot of money to kept calling and yelling at them to drive faster made me want to sue the pants off her if this country had laws. I was furious. And this is why I implore those of you going to Mongolia ever (why) to never use Sunpath.
After Sea Bass was pushed onto a five-hour bus that he didn’t sign up for, we told Guido that it was unacceptable to do that to him and to us, considering how dangerous it was to speed like that. It’s okay, he said. Um, no, we are telling you it’s not okay. The language barrier here really posed a problem. It’s a shame that they clearly cannot talk back to or disagree with their employer, because she is super wrong here.
For the first time in a week, at lunch we were given a menu to choose from instead of being brought whatever the restaurant made for us. I was so excited when I saw fresh vegetable salad on the menu. Obviously I ordered it. And – obviously guess what it was! CUCUMBER AND TOMATO YOU GUESSED IT! I didn’t even care.
We finally got to the Semi Gobi, and I was super conflicted. I thought I’d be okay with riding a camel (as was planned for us) because I’ve done it several times before, but this time just felt unnatural. Before, in Jordan and Israel, at least, it was like, oh we have to get around by camel, that’s what is done here. But here, it was just completely for tourists to take rides around the dunes. I felt too weird to say anything, so we took the ride (and made it half the usual length to at least do a little less damage, I hope), but I felt so bad for these poor camels. I just wonder when was the last time they got water. I wonder how well these tour operator people treat them. It sucks.
The Semi Gobi at least was cool to see, with its typical landscapes that you’d expect of the Gobi in full.
The Semi Gobi at least was cool to see, with its typical landscapes that you’d expect of the Gobi in full.
i hope you’re okay
We finally got to OUR LAST GER CAMP! It was so exciting…until I realized it was one of the bad ones. Ughhh. So we arrived, and we figured out from observing that, they didn’t actually have a ger for us? A big tour group was coming that they wanted to keep together, and since we were only 2, they didn’t want to use a big ger on us. So…we were put in the owners’ ger. Like the people who live there yearround. They took their stuff off their beds (that they’ve been sleeping in forever…not that ANY of the bedsheets and blankets were cleaned in any of the camps but at least now we are really seeing that they definitely were not changed (we always slept in our sleeping bag liners, thank god for them) and it was so weird. You might be thinking that being in the owners’ ger means it’s a bit nicer than the others, don’t you. It doesn’t mean that. It means it smells like poop and people and the owners keep coming in every 20 minutes for a possession they need, be it toothbrush or clothes or cups and dishes. An old lady just grabbed her toothbrush from a rope in the ceiling and started brushing in here.
see that little brown box in the center, but all the way in the back? toilet
The toilet is 120 steps away, so it’s closer than others have been (eyeroll) but there is NO FLOOR. Between the walls, it’s just open pit and two planks to balance on precariously. Usually it’s the two planks, yes, but usually there is some other semblance of flooring near the walls. This was just all open. And the door doesn’t shut, so you have to hold the edge with one hand the whole time.
We went on a hike to get away from it all. The landscape nearby was nice, more deserty obviously being in the Semi Gobi.
this sand makes me thirsty
When we came back from the hike, we found this in our ger:
UM HELLO RANDOM MONGOLIAN CHILD.
Just someone’s child, fast asleep. We wouldn’t wake him, so we just hung out and read and stuff.
A little later, the old lady came in to grab a pot and didn’t mention the boy.
About an hour or two later, Guido came in and we said, “Hey, um, do you know who this is, what he’s doing here?” He laughed and said, “Haha, I think that he is someone’s kid,” and left. YOU DON’T SAY, GLINDA. (Opening number of Wicked: “After all, she had a father! She had a mother! As so many do.”)
This is really hysterical but it’s getting late and we cannot go to sleep with a random child in here. So inappropriate! This is such a mess. Oh and I realized why it smells like poop. That huge overflowing box of wood in the middle of the room, for making a fire in the central stove? Not wood. It’s dung.
The only good part was this HILARIOUS little girl running around the whole time and making the cutest faces.
The gers at this camp were super close together. I didn’t care. I peed outisde all night. I am an animal now.
DAY 7
All Day 7 is is the drive back to UB! HUZZAH! We successfully got them to leave at 8am instead of 9am (I’M A CELEBRITY GET ME OUT OF HERE!) but even though we arrived in city at like 11:30am, it was the hardest thing yet to convince Guido that we didn’t want to stop for a ridiculously unnecessary and long lunch. They were so concerned that we wanted to deviate from the plan (just go to lunch after you drop us off!) that they got Grape Leaves on the phone because, of course, turns out SHE is the one who hates any deviating from the plan. It was so ridiculous. We had to tell her on the phone that we just wanted to get to our hotel. JFC it’s like she never wanted us to be FREE OF THIS WEEK. I just want to get to the incredibly fancy hotel we booked tonight to treat ourselves after this week and before our next sleeper train tomorrow (to China!). I was so excited to SHOWER! And eat SALAD! And pee indoors tonight in a real toilet!
Finally, FINALLY, we got out of that car for the last time! Oh my god the joy! The joy would continue beyond belief, because we walked into the Kempinski hotel, and it was the fanciest, most incredible hotel I’ve ever seen.
ONE BED FOR SLEEPING ONE BED JUST FOR JUMPING!!
It’s where George W. Bush, renowned painter, stayed when he came to UB, so I should have guessed it would be super fancy. But I guess I forgot what clean and nice could be, so I was flipping out. But really it was nicer than I think any hotel I’ve ever seen. Just the nicest in every way. I immediately put on my gym clothes and checked out the 24-hour gym. Guys, it was the nicest gym I’ve ever seen too.
Every machine had a towel and water bottle on it! There was so much equipment and still so much floor space! They were playing instructional videos from bodybuilding websites on a big tv! THERE WERE TWO SAUNA ROOMS! I wish my gym in London was as nice as this!
Best of all…I’m so excited to tell you…what’s better than going from peeing in latrine pits in the woods to using a real toilet?
PEEING IN A JAPANESE ROBOT TOILET! The best toilet in the entire world! I haven’t seen one of this beauts since Thailand. If you aren’t familiar, well, I’m sorry. They are the greatest invention since I don’t know the wheel. They have buttons that clean errthang, and at different water speeds and pressures and temperatures, plus buttons that play music for ‘modesty’, plus all the regular bidet functions, and buttons that I don’t even know what will happen if you push them, like when Jules hit the ‘no’ button on hers on “Cougar Town” (rip). It was like the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of the past week, as opposite as we could get. I wish we could stay in this hotel for longer but that would require staying in UB for longer and nah. (Also wayyy out of budget.)
After we both took the longest showers known to man (the bathroom had both a separate shower cubicle AND a shower in the giant tub. I can’tttt), we went to Loving Hut and got some of the food I shared in the previous post. It was the best day. Even if we didn’t stay in the nicest hotel and find a place with salads and smoothies, it would still have been a great day because WE WERE DONE.
EPILOGUE
This past week was truly insane. I don’t know if I’m glad I went through it or not. I can say for sure it changed me though — I went from wishing to find bathrooms on long car rides to wishing to find a toilet to wishing that the hole in ground had a door to wishing that just not too many people could see my bare butt from the road. I have come so far. What an absolutely ridiculous experience. Humans invented stuff for a reason, Mongolia. Wash your hands.
*This marks the last post on this Trans Mongolian Adventure page of the Travel section! On to China!
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Cork, Ireland: Lovely Little City with Great Vegan Food
Apparently Cork is a city; I had to look it up because I was about to call it a little town (it’s a quiet village). But it’s a lovely little place and an easy town (village) (city?) to see when visiting a wider swath of Ireland and especially en route to the countryside (which is the best part of Ireland). I was there for the weekend recently to speak at the Indie Cork Film Festival, an annual autumn event that I recommend going to if you’re in town. Hooray for independent film and lovely Irish people who pronounce it ‘fillum’ (LOVES IT). I was also there three years ago (!) during a visit to the countryside of County Cork and so will be mixing information (food) about both trips herein. Try to guess which info is from which trip! What a fun game!
Gray and rainy along the River Lee
First of all, arriving in Cork from a city like London, especially a city with a giant mall-airport like Heathrow, is adorable. Cork airport is a wee bebbeh, which means the lines at the car rental desks will probably include your entire plane. And if you are going out of the city, you need a car. So just budget time accordingly.
It’s about a 15 minute drive from the airport to the city center, which is situated on the River Lee, which separates into two channels for a lil bit and creates an island in the middle (like the Seine!) and that island is the busier city center. On the way you’ll pass the tallest building in the Republic of Ireland, The Elysian. No pictures because driving (I mean I wasn’t driving (‘ohhh, I don’t druive’)but it’s hard to get a picture of something when you are moving). Apparently it’s an apartment building and it has an Aldi on the ground floor, which is nice for people who don’t like going outside. NB that it’s not the tallest building on the island of Ireland; that’s in Belfast, which is Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, which is in trouuuuuble.
Pretty colors on a rare sunny day
So now you know about the tallest building and the independent film festival and the Ile de la Cite but of Ireland and you’ve seen pictures of the river which is very nice to stroll along and so apart from visiting a few cathedrals if you want to, you’re done with Cork! I wasn’t kidding. Tis a babe! It’s a very nice place but it’s not exactly a tourism hot spot. And yet I’ve been twice! And yes once was for work but you know what, it’s a pleasure to be there – especially as a vegan. The vegan scene is getting very exciting there, and so we’re going to talk food for the rest of this post. Coming from Philly and London, two beyond incredible vegan food cities, I might seem a little silly for raving about wee Cork’s wittle vegan scene, but it was able to tick all my boxes (ice cream, healthy food, avocado toast) and more importantly it shows signs of a strong base to keep it active and growing.
First stop, the Quay Co-op.
Okay this picture might be giving away what trip it’s from
The Quay Co-op is a vegetarian institution in Cork, a workers cooperative that was established in 1982 (older than me!) to serve as an alternative community project, a collective effort for feminists, environmentalists, LGBTQ, and other groups and people. Like vegetarians! Now, it’s a vegetarian restaurant, an organic shoppe next door, an in-house bakery, but still a place for radicals and rad people in general to mingle and mix and be. And eat!
Assorted salads my favorite thing!
It was a cold and rainy day (naturally) when we went to the Co-op, so we shared soup and bread (classics really) and two mains. I ordered the mix of all the assorted salads (I love assorted salads!) with two mounds of gravy-covered…mounds (probably a nut roast kinda thing) while Husbo P ordered the shepherd’s pie.
I REALLY LOVE SOUP. AND BREAD.
you know like food mounds
that cauliflower is looking at me because I don’t want it unless it’s making a cheesy sauce
Everything was pretty good! It’s not life-changing food or anything but it’s solid and inexpensive and the people were friendly (like everyone in this town really). This is really the place you go because it’s an institution and the vibe is uplifting.
yay inclusion and nice people!
Next up is one of my faves that I wish was my little local cafe, 143V (which I am going to assume refers to the old-school way of saying ‘I love you’ because that sounds nice). 143V may be a little outside the city center for some visitors (it was pretty close to our hotel though (see below)) but it’s worth a visit. I adore the menu, and it’s just an adorable little place. Although it wasn’t rainy, it was a little chilly so we did that thing of sharing soup. It was a simple tomato soup and it was really good! Then Husbo had the Southern burger, which is a seitan ‘chickun’ burger and it was great. I had the Oasis bowl, which is usually a falafel salad but they were out of falafel but I was actually glad because I just wanted a big ass salad but not really falafel, so I ended up getting a big ass salad (they added beans). All of it was great! They also have a lot of fun drinks like actual iced tea (not from a bottle) and turmeric lattes and smoothies. It’s somewhat slow paced so it’s not for you if you’re in a hurry but it’s lovely to sit in for a while.
We got the vegan brownie to take away, which in true UK & Euro form was more like chocolate cake (because it was cakey) but it tasted good and was saved by the inclusion of a little pot of chocolate sauce to pour over it! Yum!
My other favorite place in Cork was Earth Cafe, which is a restaurant that looks like a big black box of a shipping container was plopped on the bank of the river. It’s very close to Quay Co-op. While the Co-op has that old school veggie vibe, Earth Cafe is very much the millennial cool vegan vibe, with all the trendy hot drinks (including pumpkin spice lattes), jackfruit, and avocado toast. They offered pretty much my perfect brunch, which is a salad bowl of zucchini noodles and spinach and what nots and then a whole bunch of avo toast crammed in. I like!
Also in this vicinity is THE BEST ICE CREAM IN IRELAND, and that’s both in my opinion and what seems to be official word. Casanova Gelato had a line out the door and down the street even though it was coooold.
And there was a doggo in line with us!
HEHE DOG
They usually have a half dozen or so vegan flavors. While most of them were your standard fruit sorbet flavors (NO!), they did have two non-fruit flavors that were spectacular. Okay one was great but one was BEYOND. One of the best ice creams I’ve ever had. The great one was dark chocolate.
The PHUH NOM one was called Wanna be my Vegan and it was a finalist in an ice cream contest! I don’t know what ice cream contest or where or how I get to be a judge but man alive if this was a finalist the winner must have cheated because I can’t imagine anything better. It was a chocolate hazelnut base with like everything good mixed in, like cookies and chocolate and love and hope. AMAZING.
i wove you ice cweam
The cherry on top of all of this is that they had vegan cones – and an assortment of them at that! I obviously picked the charcoal cone because if you offer me charcoal in my food I will take it for no good reason.
My “favorite” food experience in Cork was when it was super late one night and we had to find a restaurant for dinner but because we’re in the British Isles everything closes pretty early (and it was Saturday!). But HappyCow alerted me to a pizza place called Milano that was open still AND had a separate vegan menu! Vegan pizza that wasn’t just regular pizza with no cheese? We’re in! I was excited to see what kind of indie Italian restaurant in this little baby town had a separate vegan pizza menu. And I did not laugh harder the entire trip than when we rolled up to Milano and we both instantly remembered that Milano is simply the Irish name for the chain Pizza Express. DYING! But you know what, it’s still pretty decent! I got the new Vegan Puttanesca pizza that uses marinated jackfruit in the puttanesca sauce. And yeah I might have a Pizza Express literally 4 minutes from home and then on every single block in the city after that but you know what? I’d eat that again.
I know but how good were the rest of the food pictures in this post? wouldn’t be right if they were all good that’s not what you come for
Our last food adventure came from the Malaysian noodle bar Malay Kitchen, which is entirely vegetarian and mostly vegan. We picked up a few noodle dishes and a container of deep fried tofu to eat at the airport before our late night flight. It took forever for them to make our order, but it was pretty good. If you like supes greasy noodles like your favorite cheap counter service, then you’ll love this.
On our recent trip, we stayed (courtesy of the fillum fest, a-thank you) at the very nice Hotel Metropol, which we found utterly hilarious because that’s the name used in all our Russian classes when you learn about hotel words. Gde otel metropol? We said that a lot. It means where is Hotel Metropol. I still find this hilarious. Anyway it was a very nice hotel with a big indoor pool (!!) and both a dry sauna and a steam room! I didn’t have much time to use them all so I did a fast run through of all of them in less than half an hour. It was very fun. Hotel Metropol also has a giant gym for a hotel, and I enjoyed all of it even though I actually did the thing where I hit my headphone cord when I was on the treadmill and my phone went flying (it’s okay!) and I stopped the treadmill to go get it but I started walking back before the track came to a complete stop so then I went flying and fell kind of simultaneously if that’s possible and I have a big bruise on my calf but I’m okay and my phone was okay and the dozen or so people in the gym with me did the respectable thing of pretending they didn’t see anything.
The hotel had a water jug and green apples for the taking and big fluffy white bathrobes for the wearing, which I did because that’s my favorite thing about hotels.
This apple’s sticker says “I never fall far from the tree” lololol A TALKING APPLE |
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So that’s my time in Cork! It’s a very nice city with not too much to do but it makes a great stopping point when you are visiting the countryside. And that’s really the thing you do in Ireland; you don’t go for the cities. We will talk about the beauty that you do go for in the next post!
Kiev (Kyiv though) Ukraine: Nice City, Interesting Sights, Indeterminate Vibe
I have to admit that I did not know about Kyiv. Not Kiev; I knew about Kiev. But that’s all I knew. Let me splain. As we planned our trip from Russia through Eastern Europe and back home to London, my husband said “we should go to Kyiv”- pronounced Keev. And I said “where is this ‘Keev’ I never heard of it” and he was like “Kyiv is the capital of Ukraine??” and I was like “no that’s Kiev and it is pronounced ‘Kee-ev'”and he was like “wat” and I was like “what is happening” and I learned that Kiev (‘Kee-ev’) is the Russian word for the city, and since gaining their independence, Ukrainians have been very serious about reclaiming their own word for their capital city, ‘Kyiv’ (Keev), the one syllable version that was unknown to me. Can we blame the Russian bots for my ignorance? Now I’m all smarted up and ready to talk about this great city, Kyiv. Or Kiev, if you wanted to I guess. I like the sound of the two-syllable evil version better, but my preferences as a non-Ukrainian don’t matter. Do as the people want us to. It’s Kyiv.
i know this is a hotel but come on pretty
Now that that’s sorted, let’s talk about this charming city. We were solidly back in Eastern Europe now, having left Mother Russia. Oh let’s talk about that leaving bit, shall we. After our less-than-a-day return to Moscow, we caught an overnight train – our second-to-last one of the trip!! – from Moscow to Kyiv. This train was the worst experience yet, isn’t that so fun??? I know some of you who kept up through all the China and Uzbek trains are like, what how on earth could it be worse? What about those 8 hour border stops where you had to sneak into the bathrooms to pee? What about the old Chinese lady in your bed? Well those were all terrible, yes, but hear me out. When we boarded, I thought we were soo lucky because the toilets were automated! Like Amtrak, with the lit-up flush buttons and stuff! They weren’t just holes opening up onto the track! Unfortunately, that luster was short-lived. Apparently the super-fancy (not fancy, basic technology) toilets very quickly broke, and since the conductor isn’t an engineer, he just duct-taped the toilet shut, rendering it unusable for the rest of the journey. I trekked down to the other end of the carriage with a sigh, which turned into a bigger, more horrified scream when I saw that that toilet was ALSO taped shut. The next cabin on was the restaurant car! No toilets in there! And the next one in the other direction was the overcrowded platzkart, packed full of people in bunk beds in the open plan, with lines for the toilet at all hours and so resentful of people from other carriages on their turf. Those toilets were basic open-the-bottom-onto-the-tracks; apparently only those passengers with doors were given the fancy easily breakable toilets. So every hour throughout the night, I had to clamber through the terrifying open section that connects carriages, stepping on the giant metal chain links that wrenched forward and back with the train’s movement and trying not to fall while jerking the heavy carriage doors open with all my might. Over and over again!
I HATE UNCLE TRAINY you see what I did there
Thank all the lucky stars, I was okay. Pissed off and full of impotent rage that I couldn’t actually direct at anyone (I never saw the conductor people, and also what else could they have done), but okay. I was so excited to see Kyiv, which I know I am spelling in the progressive way but honestly I can’t stop saying Ki-ev in my head. Anyway, I didn’t know much about Ukraine going in, except that I had just recently started saying it without the ‘the’ that so many Americans seem to think is required – seriously why do we always call it The Ukraine?? it’s so weird! – and that Oksana Baiul was my favorite skater in 1994 and the only winner to come out of the whole Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan debacle. Well her and Margot Robbie. I was eager to learn more about the country through its well regarded capital city.
Our Russian language skillz would come in handy to understand all the signs in Cyrillic and all the similar sounding vocab, but despite much of the population speaking and/or understanding Russian, it would not be very wise to lead with speaking Russian. Since their independence from the Mother Country, Ukrainians have some tension, to say the least, with Russia, as we all do. We assumed, now that we were back in Europe, that it would be easy to get by with English. Surely most of the people know English! Spoiler, they don’t! It was very rare that we encountered English speakers. So follow Scar’s advice (not the Boy Scouts)(the Boy Scouts suck) and Be Prepared.
I realize this is just a hotel that we didn’t stay at and I shared a photo from a different angle above but it really represents the city’s aesthetic well
Our train arrived at about 7am, so we were exhausted and very much wanting to shower. Our last shower was in that random hostel in Moscow (was that the day before? Time had no meaning any longer). So we took a cab to our lodging. We were staying for the next few nights at the Theatre Boutique Apart-hotel, in a studio apartment situation that operated like a hotel, sort of, in that there was to be someone at a desk in the building of apartments to check us in. I initially liked how it sounded because theatre. The building was hard to find because it was set back in a kind of alley complex that was SUPER shady and graffitied and even at 7am just completely sketchy. I was skeptical. And unforch, because it was so early, no staffers were in yet. The maid was there, luckily, and was used to dealing with guests arriving at inopportune times, and she told us we could leave our stuff and come back in….six hours. I KNOW! I was soooo mad. Surely the main employee would be in at 9, right? And would call us and tell us that our room was ready before the godforsaken common check in time of 2pm? I could not wait six hours! But I had to! Ahhh! Anyway the ‘place’ we could leave our stuff was right there in the main hallway, reeeeeally not secure, so I was not feeling this place at all. Strike after strike. Z was like ‘who is going to steal our disgusting stuff tho’ and I was like ‘disgusting people tho’. I asked the maid if there was a bathroom we could use – we still needed to brush our teeth and stuff if we couldn’t shower yet! Well, this is an apartment hotel type jawn, not a hotel hotel with bathrooms on the main floor or anything, so no, the only bathrooms are in the rooms. Ahhhh! Luckily, the maid was super nice and showed us to one down the hall that was HER CLOSET. Like it had all her cleaning supplies in it and also all her snacks and changes of clothes and pictures and knick knacks and stuff and also a toilet and a tiny baby sink and it was sooooo awkward. I was so grumpy about this whole situation. But there’s no time to sulk when you are filthy and also in a new exciting city! We decided to go out and get food, and that story plus all related stories will come in a separate post about Kyiv food next. After that and some activities which I’ll talk about next, our room was ready, and it was GREAT. I was so happy because after how low my expectations had dropped since arriving, it was so much nicer than I hoped. It was clean and modern, all black and white and cool, with a nice bathroom and a big comfy bed with really good white sheets. I love white sheets. Anyway, so don’t judge a book by its cover or its lack of employees or main floor toilets and all that. I would highly recommend staying here.
St Sophia
The most important activity for us to do in the city center was see the St. Sophia Cathedral, the oldest surviving church in Kyiv. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and you know how we feel about them (loves it!) so off we went to see how the old broad looked after about 1000 years of hard living. The complex is lovely. Note, the Bell Tower costs extra to climb up, but I think it’s worth it. It’s right at the entrance to the whole complex and is nice to end your visit with after seeing the rest of St. Sophia. Also, the Bell Tower is the only spot in the whole place where you are allowed to take pictures so it was worth it just so I can break up all my nonsense with pictures.
climb this biznatch
We had a nice time seeing all the interior churchiness and singing about how Jesus is an ocean, as one does. It’s said that in all the churches in Ukraine that ladies have to cover their heads because god hates seeing us evil-doers or whatever nonsense your religion teaches you to keep you down, but I don’t remember anyone telling me to do so here. I think they are more lenient with tourists. Anyway, we ended with the Bell Tower climb, because we like climbing this. I counted about 200 steps up before I stopped and lost track, which isn’t as bad as it could be buutttt the stairs were pretty, um, not reassuring as you could look through all the thin metal and exposed piping of the layout and see down forever and it was a little anxy. As you would expect of me because this is what I do when traveling in foreign lands and living my life, I banged my head super hard on a metal pipe despite there being a colored swatch on that section because it was low and apparently everyone hit their head on it before they decided to paint the cautionary alert on it but of course I am special and hit my head after they flagged it. It was really painful and we had to stop for a few minutes for the pain to subside and for me to run through the customary thoughts I have every time I hit my head which invariably have to do with Natasha Richardson. Luckily I was okay though, and it seems like Liam is now too. And the views from the top were nice.
“And the hands get heavy oh the hands I don’t know what to do with the hands or the feet”
Our next sight to see was the Golden Gate in the middle of the city, standing like a fortress to remind us of all the fortifications they once needed (prob still need) against enemies. It was named after the Golden Gate of Constantinople, and although it was completely destroyed during the Middle Ages, it was rebuilt by the Soviets in the ’80s. It’s a tad controversial, because no images of the original gate actually exist, so the rebuilding process was under scrutiny from historians et al. who were like ‘no THIS is what it should look like’ ‘ no THIS is’ ‘no YOU’RE mother was a hamster’ and finally Vlad over at the Soviet Historical Society was like ‘no guys this is what we’re doing, you disagree I kill you’ or something probably close to that.
The gate/fortress jawn is right at Zolotovoritsky Square, a lovely little square near a park and a nice row of restaurants and stuff. It’s a nice little city.
Okay so I THINK there was a lil church at the top of the Golden Gate?? And this is me in it?
looks like a funky curved lens doesn’t it like i’m in a funhouse mirror or something
This city is so nice, full of statues and greenery and beautiful buildings. I keep saying that, don’t I, that it was so ‘nice’ and I really hate that word. But there’s not much more I can think of to describe it, because I never really clicked with it. It was great to be back in Europe, and to see such lovely architecture and important monuments and relics of history and all, but I never really jived (jove?) with Kyiv. My husband liked it a lot more than I did, but I didn’t necessarily dislike it, not at all. I just didn’t connect with it. It was nice to look at, nice to be in, but I didn’t feel much for it. My heart wasn’t in it, despite its checking off all the proper points on my list like it was my Walter or my Frank in a Nora Ephron rom com before I met Tom Hanks. (Tom Hanks, btw, would be my Warsaw. Stay tuned for that, our next destination.)
who dat ninja
now that I like
As always, I loved finding funny signs or product names in stores, and despite being back in Europe, we still found some, like this brand of milk that can probably only be enjoyed by blond boys named Chad who swim for just-sub-Ivies.
Or this shop, which we made a LOT of very bad jokes about because Tories are the ones who would cut all arts funding in the UK you get?
AIN’T NO SUCH THING
We had a great time exploring Kyiv. I know you’re probably thinking…you didn’t do that much, right? Well, that’s because our main activity warrants its own post (coming next, along with a food post). The main reason for our visit to Kyiv, besides logistics, was to visit Chernobyl. We took an all day (like seriously from dawn till nighttime) tour of the zone of the infamous, horrible nuclear disaster, and it was astounding. Devastating, heartbreaking, and we learned so much that is only now coming to light about the disaster. It’s a truly worthwhile trip to take if you are in Ukraine or in Kyiv, which, despite my not clicking with it whole-heartedly, I still do recommend visiting!
