Mongolian Eagle Festival

Okay... so I lost my memory cards for a while, and I finally found one (I promise more updates when I find the other one). A few weeks ago, Maureen, Naomi and I headed out to Terelj to witness the Mongolian Eagle Festival. The festival was being held near UB for the first time, as it is a Western Mongolian tradition. Obviously, we seized the opportunity to spend $30 and spend the day watching people drag fox pelts behind a horse, having their eagles catch them, and then a few bouts of goat wrestling - the goats don't do the wrestling, two men, riding horseback, play a kind of tug-of-war with a goat. All of the competitions are designed to show how good of a hunter the man is, using his eagle.

Okay, so the picture doesn't show what's going on so well. Check out the video

Eagle festival competitor. Not sure how you win this, but I know how you lose. One eagle just kind of flew away and landed on the mountain... guess it's not such a good hunter.

Big Mongolian men, wearing traditional Mongolian dels, with giant eagles. They seemed to like carring them upside down for some reason.

Still Alive, I Promise

Sorry it's been so long since there has been any update on my end. Unfortunately, report cards, parent-teacher conferences and weeks of illness take their toll, and have a way of maing one not want to do anything. On that note, I promise to start having updates appear in the next couple weeks covering my 2 month blog absence.

Mongolia has Gone Dry

It looks like there will be no birthday drinking this year. Due to an unfortunate event over the Holidays, somewhere between 11 and 14 Mongolians died due to drinking some tainted vodka. The company responsible was apparently filling bottles of a rival company and selling their vodka at a higher price. The government has decided to take action: No alcohol will be sold in Mongolia until further notice.

In typical Mongolian fashion, this has extended beyond the cessation of vodka sales. They have decided that all forms of alcohol, domestic and imported alike will not be allowed to be sold within the country. Only the Mongolians would believe that preventing the consumption of alcohol produced outside of Mongolia is a logical response to a problem that is entirely domestic.

My Siamese Adventure

As this blog is dedicated to My adventures in Mongolia, I felt it inappropriate to include the stories from my trip to Korea, Thailand and Cambodia here. Also, it will clearly takes weeks to update you all on those adventures, so you are welcome to see my newest blog at colininternational.blogspot.com for said stories. You can also find that link in the "links" section on the right-hand side of this page.

Again, please bear with me through the lengthy time it will take to update the new blog, but continue to enjoy the stories about Mongolia in the meantime.

I should be back in Mongolia in a little over 24 hrs (as long as the planes run on time).

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Opportunity is Knocking

A great opportunity presented itself today. A couple of guys came to the school looking for a white male to star in a T.V. commercial. Obviously, I jumped at the opportunity.

I was picked up around 10, and taken to a makeshift studio. I sat around for about a 1/2 hr before they asked me to change. My costume was liederhosen and a white shirt (the socks were my own). The commercial was for Zoos Bank Mastercard.

It took about 15 takes altogether, and I played 2 different roles. I cheers myself. The first character is a sober man who is excited to see the other guy and emphatically clinks his beer stein. The second character is a drunk who has some difficulty with the whole process, and manages to clink his own beer stein back. It's almost like long lost twins finding each other at the bar. I performed in front of a green screen, so I don't know what the background is.

They paid me $10 and gave me vodka. Well worth the experience. They also promised to bring me a copy of the commercial when it's finished, so it will be posted when it arrives.

Who knew that I would become a tv commercial star when I came to Mongolia?

Christmas Vacation Plans

So, the plans are (reasonably) set. The tickets have been purchased, and now it's just days away.

Andrew and I fly out of UB on Mongolian Airlines at 5:00pm on Saturday, Dec. 15. We arrive in Seoul just after nine. We hope to meet up with many of our old friends from various phases of our lives and have a nice get-together. We will be spending 2 days in South Korea, and fly to Bangkok by Korean Airlines at 5:25pm on Monday, Dec. 17.

We will arrive in Bangkok 3 1/2 hrs later only to get a hotel room and catch a flight to Phnom Penh at 7:00 the next morning. We'll spend 2 days in the Cambodian capital before sailing up the river for 5-6 hrs to Siem Reap. We plan to spend 4 days or so there to check out Angkor Wat amid various other ancient temples, and do some interaction with the locals, and maybe even ride an elephant.

From Siem Reap, we will fly back to Bangkok. Originally, we had planned on taking the overnight train to Chiang Mai to spend a few days in the north, but we have decided to scratch that idea to provide us some leeway in case we want to spend an extra day or two somewhere. Chiang Mai also made the trip seem much more scheduled than we wanted it to be. Now, we will either spend an extra day in Siem Reap, maybe pend a day or two in Bangkok, or head down to Ko Samui for a couple of days to do some sea kayaking or snorkeling. We plan on being in Ko Phangan (an island just north of Ko Samui) by Dec. 28. We will be spending New Year's Eve there, and enjoying one of Ko Phangan's Full Moon Parties. While there we will definitely be renting some mopeds to check out the island jungle, and spend much time on the beach outside of the bungalow we plan to rent.

Jan. 1 or 2 will find us traveling back to Bangkok to spend our last few days before flying back to UB via Seoul on Jan. 5. Conveniently we lift off at 2:50am, and then have a nice 11 hr layover in Seoul. We will be back in UB at 12:35 in the morning on Jan. 6, giving us a day of rest before our professional development on Monday, Jan. 7. I have a feeling I won't be partying much for my birthday in 2008.

So, officially...

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy birthday to anyone that applies to.

Big Burger

Have you ever wondered if McDonalds would be the same by any other name? The answer is... wait for it... YES!!! They have a fabulous chain of fast food restaurants (about 3 or 4) that is almost identical to McDonals. It is called, simply, Big Burger. It's menu is a scaled down version of Mickey D's, and the decor looks like the Golden Arches about 15 years ago. The Big Mac is called the Big Burger (but uses mayo, rather than "secret sauce"). The burgers and the fries even taste the same. There are benefits to not being McDonalds though. Big Burger offers chicken wings, ramen noodles, and egg and shrimp soups. Food costs a lot less, and things only come in two sizes: small and big. So it turns out that McDonalds is only McDonalds because they can charge an arm and a leg.

P.S. my Big Mac meal cost less than $4.