Mongolia June 2007
+ Hong Kong, China

Spent the bulk of today doing odds and ends - mailing postcards, souvenir shopping, picking up train tickets to Beijing from Juulchin and walking around the city.

In the afternoon we took a car to Bogd Khan Winter Palace and Museum. Admission was T2500, but if you wanted to take photos it would set you back T10000 ($AUD=1000MNT). This is pretty common practice around tourist attractions in Asia but this makes it no less annoying. We'd be happy to pay a surcharge for photos but not four times the basic ticket price! This strategy backfires as you hardly see any tourists taking photos at locations doing this.

The Palace is nice although basic... for a palace. It features two main buildings. The museum shows some of the possessions of the first Bogd Khan (the Mongolian equivalent of a Pope) which are quite eccentric. As an example, he had an elephant walked all the way over from Europe and a beautiful costume made for it. Then got back to our new hotel for the day (paid for by Intrepid) to meet the rest of the group. A bit of trepidation because the Inrepid leaders for Mongolia haven't received very positive reviews around the internet.

The group turns out to be four people. First up was Mike, a 24 year old Californian travel agent. I can't guess his background, which is understandable as he turns out to be half Vietnamese-half Brazilian.

Next to arrive was Gail, 51, a paediatric nurse from Hobart. She's from England initially, and told us one of the main reasons her parents moved to Tasmania was to avoid black people (Tasmania eliminated their Aboriginal population 150 years ago.) Charming. It's good that she reflects nothing of this at all.

Our driver is introduced as Cosmos, a literal translation of his Mongolian name Sansar. He's a 30 year old goat herder whose driving gig forces him to leave his family behind for large amounts of time during the summer.

Baghi is our local guide and also the Intrepid leader. During the winter she's a television journalist but she guides during the summer because it pays better (!). Meeting her I breathed a sigh of relief - it seems Intrepid has taken the feedback on board. Her English is great, so I can't imagine why we would need a foreigner to lead us as well.

Then of course there's Peter, a medicine student, and myself.





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