Day #2 - Sat., August 23 - UlaanBaatar, Mongolia

The Time and Place Machine - Korean Airlines SFO to Seoul (Incheon Airport) to UlaanBaator
  
     Mongolian Spellings and UlaanBaator Once and for all
          The name of the city that the sunrise is presently revealing to us from the 12th floor of our lovely hotel is spelled many ways.  Grammar school geography taught UlanBator and there are all sorts of variants.  Local residents use a shorthand -- U.B. -- pronounced "you-bee" - accent on the first syllable -- YOU-bee.  Rhymes with "newbie" which is what most of our group is at the moment.

I'm not going to continue to type UlaanBaator any more -- UB it shall be for the duration.  The name suggests some possible pastoral and exotic origins, but it means "Red  Hero" and represents the long and sometimes painful 20th century relationship of Mongolia with the Soviet Union.  The historic name was Urga (rendered phonetically variously).  Most Mongolians are trying to forget their Soviet interlude, so putting such a clunky, political name into an almost disdainful two-syllable toss-off -  UB- hurts no one's feelings.  Unlike the poor visitor who tries to truncate San Francisco into Frisco or even SF.  UB it is.

 Chingiss or Ghengis or?  While I'm at it, let's get this out of the way too -- The name of the guy whose presence is everywhere in Monogolia -- his name is the first thing you see in neon over the funky, wonderful, old-fashioned airport, and you walk past his face after going through immigration down to retrieve the luggage on a carousel that is soooooo retro.  Anyway, I'm going to use the more popular spelling of Genghis.

Janet Jones with book. Seatmate appears
to be reading Janet's book and weeping.

The Flight -- On-time, smooth and uneventful.  Korean Air is a classy airlines -- great service -- here, have another meal!  In flight entertainment is right in front of you on the seatback - movies, games.  The cabin attendants are really marvelous, reminiscent of JAL 25 years ago.  If you get a chance, fly Korean. 

Front to back - intent group - Barbara and Lud, Mary Lynne and Mike,
Barbara Canfield - pink top of head, and Janet

I love these air-progress maps -- we're getting closer!

 One short stop to UB - We are flying Korean both ways on this unusual itinerary because they were the only ones flying one-stop SFO to UB, and Irkutsk

When we checked into our first long leg – SFO to Seoul – the Korean Airlines check-in woman said that there were 13 total folks on the flight who were checking through to UB.  I knew of 8 of them  (we would meet or Pacific Northwest travelers Pat and Joe in Seoul), but who could be the other five?  I thought we were being pretty unique and crafty, but apparently not.

About 11 hours after taking off from California, chasing the sun, we landed at the new Seoul airport.  Another one of those amazing steel and stone monoliths, with the wings stretching off as far as one can see, lined with every imaginable store – bright, clean, inviting.  Of course we had to go through security again in transit, but we then hurried to our gate to meet Joe Jedrychowski and Pat Loughlin, our two group members from Oregon/Washington.

We were easy to spot as were they – we have distinctive luggage flagging – and we had sent them a mugbook with our photographs and they obviously had studied them because as we shook hands and greeted each and other, they already knew us by name.  We had a chance to chat a bit before boarding the second leg of the trip – Seoul to UB.

The flight was absolutely jammed, and we were among the dozen or so non-Asians aboard.  An amazing collection of humanity – including a large number of men dressed to the hilt in climbing/trekking gear – carabineers hanging from their backpacks, hiking books, knee-high hiking socks – a combination of Tyrolean mountaineer and REI catalogs – they were amped and determined-looking as if they were ready to charge off the plane in UB and climb a mountain right away.  Not likely as our flight landed at 10:00 PM.  And we were finally in UB.

 The Chingiss Khan Airport – Talk about your wonderfully-funky old-fashioned airport.  Hasn’t changed a bit since we were last here in 2007.  No steel and marble and shopping arcades.  And, immigration was the group’s first introduction to Mongolian Time – things move a little slower here – not like Hawaiian-time or Santa Cruz Time where everybody just naturally shows up late – this is an oozing kind of thing – milling around time – organization not too crisp – the immigration and customs folks appearing a bit bewildered.  And it is a bit of  puzzlement.

Chingiss Khan Airport - one version of the spelling

The puzzlement is that Genghis Khan’s armies were the epitome of organized – thousands of warriors on horseback wheeling like a living creature – like a flock of birds – across the plains – perhaps the most organized military machine the world had ever seen.  But they don’t seem to give much thought to organizing lines and queues.  It’s really OK, but it’s just a puzzlement.

 

The Luggage River It's not a large oval carousel like you're used to -- it's a conveyor belt that pops out of the wall through a screen of the those heavy plastic floppy things, and then winds around like a river, looping back and around before finally disappearing back into the space where I could hear the luggage handlers grunting and hollering -- every now and then a local would go up and lift up the floppy thing and peer back to where it was all happening -- shake his head and resume standing and waiting. Eventually all of our luggage popped out and was accounted for. Amazing when you think about it -- on the belt in San Francisco and out a bazillion miles later in UB.  

We finally got through it all and out into the brisk 50’s night air and onto our small bus that we’ll have for the duration.  But not before the bus drive had to use his flashlight to find the key to the bus that he had dropped onto the dark parking.  Mongolia is like that. 

One of the nice things about UB not having built a new airport is that they probably would have put it out in the Gobi somewhere requiring a 4 hours drive into the city – like Narita in Tokyo.  As it is it took less than 30 minutes to get us through the very quiet city streets to our hotel – one of UBs top-rated – Ramada City Center.   The group was very patient as I worked with our tour guide – Chinge – more about her to come – to get the room keys squared away – again, a bit disheveled with almost an element of surprise –oh, you’re here! 

Yes we were and we’re going to hit the city with a vengeance. Everyone’s fine and healthy.  We have a late start this morning – 11:00 AM we’ll be meeting in the lobby to dissect this place and the people who once struck fear into most of the world.