Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Current mood: embarrassed
Please note: There is material in this entry that some with more sensitive (prudish) sensibilities might find rather graphic. hehe. Those entries are always the best kind in MY book
The Half-breed
I just got back from 4 days in the Gobi Desert (for those of you who aren't aware, the Great Gobi Desert is located in the southern part of Mongolia---little fact for ya). I went with a half-breed (American/Swedish) guy named Daniel---who claimed that he was really Swedish but was TOTALLY, 100% AMERICAN and who, quite disappointingly turned out to be a very quiet, solitary kind of guy. (Considering that we spent UMPTINE hours together in vans/jeeps getting tossed around like shake-n-bake chicken---one stretch of which was NINETEEN HOURS and also shared a tent together...) Ya, had no sense of humor. ANYWAY. Letting go, letting go... Deep breath. So that explains that, one aspect of my trip which I would like to fuzz away into nothing...
ABBA
Once we got to one of the southern towns near the Chinese border we hired a driver, a very musically-gifted driver with GREAT music taste. He didn't speak a lick of English and didn't appreciate a lot of silence, but loved to listen to A LOT of music. ALL OF THE TIME. If there had been radio stations or he had had a decent collection of music (tapes/Cd's) on him this wouldn't have been so bad. But no. He only had TWO tapes on him. Just TWO. One tape of Mongolian Super Hits 2006 and ABBA'S GREATEST HITS. That's it. Those were the two tapes he possessed. And he ADORED those two tapes. In the 72 hours that he drove us all over the Gobi Desert and then back up to Ulaanbaatar he only listened to those two tapes. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. I now know all of ABBA'S GREATEST HITS by heart thanks to that man and I'm well on my way to memorizing that tape of Mongolian Super Hits 2006 as well. Now, whenever I think of the Great, Majestic, Ever-expansive Gobi Desert there will always be a loud whisper of "Dancing Queen" filling in the silence.
Nude Sunbathing (Quite possibly the most mortifying experience to date.)So. I am not a proclaimed nudist by any means. I do not have any desire to lounge around my house naked, or join up with a nudist colony. But sometimes I just like to have my occasional "skinny-dip" or some such thing. Keeps life exciting don'tcha know. And I promise you, if you do stuff like that, it will help, as one down-and-out girl pop group who shall remain nameless used to say, "spice up your life."
So here's the set-up: I had just climbed to the top of a HUGE sand dune and been abandoned by the half-breed who went off to climb the next highest dune a few dunes over. I was sitting/laying up there, enjoying the gorgeous view, taking it all in, playing in the lovely, dry, fine sand, listening to the wind blow when I got this idea---There was not a soul around and the sun was warm so I thought to myself "how crazy would it be to sunbath up here on the top of this dune?!" I could see the 3 yurt camps far off into the distance and there weren't any other hikers around or anything so I thought, "What the hell?!" So, without further ado I got down into my birthday suit and thoroughly enjoyed myself, lulling around in the sand (I LOVE the feel of sand) becoming one with nature and the surrounding dunes. I was up there, enjoying myself, rolling around in the sand for who knows how long, having an absolute BALL....until....I heard voices. YES, VOICES. In utter and TOTAL PANIC I peeped my head over the edge of the sand dune to see not one or two tourists, OH NO. But FOUR, FOUR French tourists, three of which were guys my age, who were coming over towards me. In that split second that I looked over, our eyes met, they saw me (their jaws kinda dropped if you can imagine...) and I started shouting and waving frantically "WAIT!!!! WAIT!!!! STOP!!!" They were nice enough to duck down behind the dune and give me time to scramble back into my clothes. After which there was nothing else to be done, but to walk over to them and apologize and laugh it off. Needless to say they got a HUGE laugh out of it and were laughing for quite a while (they're probably STILL laughing now come to think of it). They also invited me over to their yurt later on for a beer, (I know you're smacking your head thinking "DUH JULIA!!") Anyway. Shame I couldn't go. They were cool. (One of them even looked like Orlando Bloom!) So ya. Gonna be hard to live that down.
Another bit of advice: (and just because I say this DOES NOT mean that I actually DID this or anything of this nature happened...) When doing something like I did up there on the sand dunes, it is NOT a good idea to try to be all "artistic" with your camera, and then later down the road, forget which order your pictures are in on your camera and then go showing off the lovely pictures you took of the dunes to other tourists...
Ya. And on that note I shall end this entry. Good times in Mongolia (had by all...not just Julia).
9:15 PM
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