The World's Greatest Conman... and Beer

I woke up at 8, later than the everyone else (excluding the 12-year-old boy who was fast asleep, and Brian), and set about packing so Brian and I could leave after breakfast.

Breakfast was in the kitchen Ger, the family's second and smaller ger. It consisted of pasta mixed with curry, peppers, green beans, pumpkin, and last nights lamb. Delicious - and while I may sound repetative when I use that word for almost every meal, it's not because I have no food standards, but because all these meals really are delicious!

At 8:30 I woke Brian up and he came to eat. By 9:30 we were on the road.

The drive was quiet, I slept most of the way (until the hour of it that had no road and we offroaded through the steppe). Of the five hour drive, about an hour was spent discussing politics with Gans. We had been warned to not discuss politics with Mongolians because they become very angry and violent, but Gans is very intelligent and passive, though opinionated.

At 1:30 we stopped at the driver's home in Ulaanbaatar and he went in to grab something. We were invited upstairs to look. He had a great little apartment with a wolf skin and fish skin on the wall. He showed us his hunting rifle and we left.

At 2 we arrived at the hostel. We took well deserved showers and rested until 4, when we left to see a bit of UB.

We walked for a while until we found ourselves wandering down Peace Ave. We saw SubBaatar, the place we ate for breakfast yesterday and went inside. Another delicious sub.

We made an attempt to see the Moon Ensemble, which had been recommended to us, but we couldn't find it, so we went to Sookbaatar square, complete with a statue of Sookbaatar (who ousted both the Chinese and the Russians successively and is credited with much of modern Mongolia's independence) and Chinggis Khan.

After a short walk, we set foot into North Korea... Well, the embassy, but by every international law we were and have been in North Korea. Probably the first American's in a long time to get in and out unscathed.

We stopped to get ice cream on our next part of our walk, and as we left someone grabbed Brian's arm. Brian twisted away and ducked to one side, and when we looked over, it was Marcel! The worlds greatest conman strikes again! First we roomed with him in Moscow, then we ended up staying in the same place in Irkutsk, and now we bump into him on the street in Ulaanbaatar! Small world.

Brian and I started calling Marcel the worlds greatest conman because he fits the stereotype so perfectly. He has a broad disarming smile and a fantastic yodelers mustache, a Maurice Chevalier accent and has refused to come with us every time we've bumped into him so far. On top of that, he told us incredible stories about a life that's almost unreal on the train, then got picked up under a different name than we knew him by in Irkutsk, and refused to join us when we saw him for the THIRD time in a third place!

I figured out why Marcel has never accepted our invitations to join us where we are going, either in Irkutsk or in UB. He's been dreaming of this trip for years - and now that he's finally doing it, he is not looking to make any lasting friendships. Rather, he wants to have only great first impressions so he doesn't run the risk of not liking anyone in the long run. He wants this vacation to be perfect... but it's hilarious to think that in UB he's the Sultan of Dubai and in Dubai he's Prime Minister of Mongolia, or in Irkutsk he's a diamond miner in sub-saharan Africa..

Marcel was with a Frenchman he had met on the train from Irkutsk to UB, and when Marcel went his own way the three of us remaining walked to the Gandantegchenling Monastery, the biggest Buddhist Monastery in UB.

They charged us 3500T (about $3 at 1300T per dollar) each to get in, but we weren't allowed to take pictures. I took a few of the 80 foot Buddha statue anyway. We headed to the hostel at 7.

At the foot of the monastery road we said au revoir to our French friend who's name I forget, and we walked towards the room. Stopped for a beer on the way in a bar catering to Mongolians only - our kind of place.

Rested until 10:30 at Idre's Guesthouse, our quaint hostel.

At 10:45 we left and stopped at a restaurant a little ways from Idre's. We figured we'd try the pizza they advertised. Opting out of the Hawaiian pizza when we realized it had no pineapple on it (what?) we got a meat lovers pizza.

I ordered a Mongolian beer that we had seen advertised as having won gold in some huge international competition. I was skeptical that the competition was anything worthy of note until I tasted it. Fusion Beer is delicious. We decided our goal tomorrow, our last full day in Mongolia, would be to ship home a case or two. It probably won't happen but a boy can dream, can't he?

Bed by midnight.