Erenhot

So what should have been a simple 2-day visa run to the Mongolian border turned into a random 5-day adventure to Ulaanbaatar with my new American friend Stephanie. I arrived in the border town of Erenhot (Erlian 二连 in Chinese) on a Friday night, and was planning to cross the border on Saturday morning by jeep to the Mongolian border town of Zamyn-Uud, where I could come immediately back across and get a new China entry stamp on my one-year visa that requires me to leave the country every three months. Unfortunately on Saturday morning as I was leaving my hotel in Erenhot bright and early, I discovered that the border was closed for the weekend because of the Mongolian Naadam Festival. Who would have known! Not getting back to Beijing by Sunday was bad enough because I was in the middle of three projects that all needed finishing ASAP, but to make matters worse Sunday was the last day I had to leave China before hitting my 90-day limit, and the Chinese fine heavily for overstaying your welcome. Fortunately after a quick trip to the train station I found out that there was a train that day that could still get across the border, but then I wouldn't be able to come back across the border until Monday at the earliest (actually I was originally told that the border would reopen on Tuesday!). While waiting in a line of rabid, violent Chinese and Mongolians eager to secure train tickets across the border as well, I met several other foreigners, including a fellow American named Stephanie who just happened to live up the road from me in Beijing and new one of my good American friends. She was also on a visa run and also didn't know about the border closing and also desperately needed to get back to Beijing ASAP, but after some deliberation we decided that instead of sitting on our butts for two or three days in the Mongolian border town of Zamyn-Uud with nothing to do we should instead head up to Ulaanbaatar with some our other new foreign friends and check out the tail end of the Naadam festivities. And a good decision it was.

Before we caught our afternoon train across the border and eventually on to Ulaanbaatar, we had a few hours to kill on the Chinese side of the border in Erenhot and decided to go check out this quaint little town's one claim to fame: dinosaurs. Yeah, rather odd, especially when coming into the town by bus and seeing loads of massive dinosaur statues placed randomly in the sandy grasslands along the highway, but ever since the discovery of dinosaur bones in the region several years ago this seems to be the number one card the tourism industry here has decided to play. We heard there was a dinosaur museum half an hour's drive from town, but as we didn't have much time we settled for seeing the "Dinosaur Park" on the outskirts of town. Stephanie and I were joined by Hye-Kyung, a Korean girl who had been on my bus with me from Beijing and who I helped find a hotel the night before since she didn't speak much Chinese. She wasn't too keen to see dinosaurs, but she joined us anyway and was a good sport about posing for some pictures (although Stephanie was by far one of the most willing models I've met in years!). Unfortunately there were only a handful of rather disappointing dinosaurs in this spacious and newly built park to keep us entertained and make good backdrops for our silly photos, and also after only 10 minutes in the park the blistering hot sun disappeared behind a stack of dark storm clouds and we ran for cover. The only place indoors in the park was a swimming pool, so we sought shelter there with the locals who were forced to cut their swimming short to let the rain pass. We chatted with them for a while and I convinced them to pretend to be dinosaurs and take a few pictures to compensate for the lack of dinosaur statues in their lovely little park. They were quite cooperative and we got some great 'dinosaur' pictures! Then as soon as the rain let up we headed back to the train station, loaded up on fruit and instant noodles (and the Chinese version of Poprock candy, which I was very surprised to find), and set off on one of the only unplanned adventures (and definitely one of the best) I've ever been on!