A new year in Mongolia and wanton disregard for personal safety

So, in previous posts I promised to try harder to keep this blog up to date. Clearly I failed. Because I feel I have let down the literally tens of people who sporadically read this, I shall be publishing this post followed immediately by another. I know, I spoil you. I will also make a commitment to at least think about possibly trying harder to write more regularly.

It has been over 2 months since I last forced myself to sit down and write something, so I realise that what I'm writing about will be a bit out of date but what can you do? In that time I turned 24, the world turned 2010, and the milk at the back of my fridge turned sour.

As the end of the 2009 drew near I was more curious than excited about what the holiday season would be like in Mongolia. Christmas proved to be a somewhat strange affair. For those of you who don't know (and you should feel bad if you don't), Christianity isn't the religion of choice for most Asian nations. Long ago Mongolia decided to opt for the eminently more relaxed religion of Buddhism. Had they known then that the celebration of a religious figure's birth would become the consumerist, secular (how many people still think of Christmas as religious holiday first anymore?) holiday it is today, would they still have gone for the chubby chilled out guy? Probably, but the answer remains one of life's 'great' mysteries (at least in my head anyway)

Anyway, celebrating Christmas in a Buddhist country was a new experience for me. Well that is what I though at first. As the 25th crept closer I began to notice the all-too familiar signs of consumer Christmas lurking on street corners and looking shifty, like a guy who knows he is doing something wrong but just pulls his cap down further and hopes no one asks what he's doing there. Before you could say "T'is the season to be jolly' there were santa's appearing in shop windows and people selling decorations on the street. Enormous Christmas trees sprang up on Sukhbaatar Square and outside the state department store. I enquired about these anomalies from my colleagues and I was assured that they were 'New Years' trees. Go figure. Needless to say, I was perplexed by all this but I decided not to dwell on it and enjoy myself.

As it turned out, My Christmas, and indeed my New Years, turned out to be worryingly similar to many of the recent ones I had experienced (minus the family and long-term friends of course) There were parties, gluttonous meals, hangovers, awkward social situations, and the ubiquitous anti-climax that is New Years. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy all those things.

I loved the parties and having to unbuckle my belt after eating more than is good for you. Hangovers are sign that something awesome happened the night before and I have come to appreciate awkward-social situations for the comedic masterpieces they are. Hell, I even enjoyed being let down by the promise of New Years again (I would like to insert a caveat about New Years being an anti-climax. The only reason it is a consistent let-down is that I always build it up to be something greater than it ever actually is)

It is a small coincidence that throughout December I had been reading Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations' and one would assume this would have dropped a rather massive hint bomb on my thick cranium. However, even that much lauded novel wasn't all I'd hoped for. A more introspective person would realise that perhaps the problem isn't with New Years but myself. I, however, will follow the teachings of the great General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett who sagely said "when all else fails, a shear pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through". Truly wise words.

Despite my ludicrously high expectations I had a great New Years (not as great as the fire works display involving elephants,pandas, and fighter jets that I had hoped for would have been) There was a party at an AYAD's (Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development)place and a trip to Sukhbaatar Square for some champagne and fireworks. It was all very boozy and there was much frolicking. However, no New Years celebration would be complete without a bizarre occurrence.

It came in the form of 3 Frenchmen (bizarre enough on their own, I know) who were, inexplicably, scouts. That's right, scouts. Complete with toggles and those scarf things they wear. There we were, drinking champagne and trying our best to stave of frostbite when we were accosted by these Francophone folks tying knots in stuff and building camp fires. Okay, so they weren't doing that but it was still slightly surreal. It might not be the last thing you expect to find in Ulaanbaatar at midnight on New Years Eve but it's got to be up there in the top ten.

As it is inclined to do, new year came and went and I looked forward with a mixture of dread and anticipation. I find the beginning of a new year often makes me curious about the myriad ways life will attempt to kick me in the nuts in the year to come and how best to avoid these crotch aimed hazards. Invariably I come up with nothing and get on with life.

January was a notable month for 2 reasons: Firstly, I fired my first (and probably last) gun. Secondly, I finally discovered where an annoying banging noise was coming from in my apartment and put a stop to it. The former is much more interesting so I'll talk about that.

I had never really had a desire to fire a gun but I have to admit that when the opportunity arose, I was intrigued and agreed to go on the trip. The thing that most interested me was that we were told we would be able to drive a tank. Now, as a man, there are few things as inclined to make me jump up and down with excitement than being told I can drive a tank.

There were 9 other people who felt the same as me and on a freezing Sunday morning we clambered into our vehicles safe in the knowledge that soon we would be handling weapons of war with absolutely no idea what we were doing. The drive out to the 'Monglian Military Tourist Camp' (surely the best name in the history of tourist camps) started pleasantly enough, Mongolia is after all a very beautiful country. Unfortunately, once you leave the bubble that is Ulaanbaatar, the roads quickly deteriorate and travelling becomes something of a nightmare. This we discovered as our vehicles got stuck in the snow that had had all winter to build up.

The first time this happened, all we needed to do was push to free ourselves from a snowy trap. The second time we weren't so lucky. We had to cross a ditch of sorts which we knew would be full of snow, but we were spurred on by the temptation of the tank. We opted for the 'drive as fast as you can at the problem and hope for the best' tactic which precipitated a rapid reduction in forward momentum as we immediately got stuck in a snow drift.

Some people might have panicked when confronted with a potentially deadly situation like this, but we weren't some people. We were development workers, and development workers don't take snow for an answer (you see what I did there...snow...no...think about it. It's genius) We exited the vehicles and began heroically watching on as our drivers started digging us out. You probably don't realise how much courage it takes to stand aside and let other people do the work but let me tell you, its at least some.

Eventually, after we had spent a fair bit of time running around and having fun, it dawned on us that we were losing time with the tank. With this sudden realisation, we intrepid development workers sprang into action and began ineffectually pawing and kicking the snow with a small portion of the might we could muster. It was a truly magnificent sight.

After untold (probably around 20) minutes of intense effort we freed ourselves from the icy Bastille and charged onwards to tank and gun paradise. For about 5 minutes at least, then we encountered another ditch and spent 30 minutes trying to traverse it.

Finally, after enduring more hardships than any humans had had to bear (fact!) we arrived at our destination. We were cold, slightly damp, and some of us (me) were a little sleepy but through sheer grit and determination we had made it...only to be told that we couldn't drive the tank because there was no fuel or it was frozen solid, I forget which. As you can imagine, the disappointment was palpable. Some of us wept, I tried to hurl myself off a cliff but could only find a small dip in the land and so I ended up jumping into some snow and adopting the pose from that scene in platoon where Willam Defoe gets killed.

I may have made that last bit up but I think I am allowed some dramatic license, it is my blog after all.

The 'military tourist camp' consists of a ger camp, a brick building, the tank, and a firing range. It's not a big place by anyone's standards. Once we had finished playing on the tank (naturally the thing we all gravitated towards when we arrived) we were taken to the firing range. There was a table on which were laid all the guns which were available for our ballistic pleasure. There were a few pistols, a sub-machine gun, sniper rifle, AK47 (weapon of choice for guerilla movements the world over), RPD heavy machine gun, and finally an RPG, or rocket propelled grenade launcher. That's right, a bazooka.

I have to be honest, we were like kids in a toy store, only wielding guns instead of lego's. It was quite an expensive affair so I could only afford to fire one gun. Naturally I chose the AK47. Having never fired a gun before I should have probably chosen something more beginner friendly, but then it wouldn't have been as much fun.

We each chose a gun, took a number, and waited for our turn to open up a can of whoopass on the targets down range. When it came to be my turn, I was more than a little nervous. I had no idea what I was doing, but with some words of advice from Julian (our resident ex-army guy) I proceeded to nail 6 targets, including the most distant one. I was a little purturbed by how exhilirated I was but I put it down to being happy for not embarrassing myself, rather than firing the gun.

Now, this may seem obvious but guns are loud. Really loud. Until you have fired one or been standing next to someone who is then you really have no idea. The sound each gun made was also very distinctive. The sniper rifle made a sharp crack, the machine gun made a more concussive sound, and the pistols made a popping sound. Up until that point I had assumed they all sounded the same. You learn something new everyday I guess.

Once I was done with the guns and returned to the tank like a toddler running to a climbing frame. I had seen a tank before but no one had ever let me mess around on one unsupervised. It was a lot of fun.

Soon the time came to leave, but not before one man stepped up and took on the big boys. That man was Jess, and he was courageous enough to pay $100 to shoot the RPG. I think I was more nervous than he was, particularly as Julian had just told me that these things sometimes explode when exposed to extremes of temperature (it was around -30C at the time). I figured 30ft would be enough to avoid anything but a light splattering of body parts should the worst happen.

Thankfully it all went swimmingly and Jess exploded the hell out of one unfortunate hill.



So that's it. I have been writing for a while and I have lost the will to go on. Presumably that happened to most people after reading the first couple of paragraphs.

I hope you enjoyed reading and I apologise for the excessive length of this post.