Returning to Mongolia and unhelpful Russians

Well, I'm back in Mongolia.

It's been a long time since I last decided to write a post and a lot has happened in the interim. There is way too much to talk about so I'll just give a rundown of the important stuff! My placement with VSO came to an end after a year which, overall, was pretty successful. Towards the end of the year I realised that I was pretty happy in Mongolia and would like to stay for another year so I began to search for someone who would be willing to give me some money in return for minimal effort on my part. This line of enquiry proved less than fruitful so I was forced to look for something that might require me to actually put in some effort. To cut a long story short I managed to get a job as a English and history teacher at Orchlon school and I'm pretty pleased about it. So after a 5 week holiday at home in Liverpool I have returned to Mongolia in a blaze of nothing out of the ordinary.

As I write this I am sitting in a friend’s apartment (as I don't yet have a place of my own to live) gazing out over a city that I have grown to love. I can see the hills to the south of Ulaanbaatar, glowing in the late afternoon sun. There's the jumble of miss-matched buildings and the noise of daily life. There is also a construction site where the roof section appears to have collapsed and is currently surrounded by a lot of builders who look distinctly perplexed. Apparently nobody told them that slender sticks were not an appropriate support for a concrete roof. Yep, it's good to be back.

Unfortunately, as good as it is to be in Mongolia, getting here wasn't much fun. Standing in Heathrow airport, contemplating the journey that lay before me (and coincidentally listening to Journey. The world's greatest band?), I began to wonder if my trip would go smoothly. The answer came when I opened the bottle of coke I had just bought and it erupted with a force that made Mt. Vesuvius circa AD 79 seem like a gurgle. So, drenched and with the laughter of the various bystanders ringing in my ears, I trudged off to my gate.

I don't know if anyone else thinks this, but airports late at night are creepy. My flight was the last of the day and as I strolled along past the closed shops and empty seats I suddenly noticed that it was very quiet...a little too quiet perhaps. Then I saw hunched figures shuffling from various dark corridors and groaning like something from a George A. Romero film. Just as I was reaching for something to defend myself against this horde of un-dead with, I realised that it was just the cleaning staff and gave a sigh of relief. Still, I got too close to one of them who promptly bared his teeth and hissed at me before flitting back into the darkness.
Once I had slumped into my seat on the plane and made myself as comfortable as possible on the seat that the designer had presumably engineered for maximum discomfort, I glanced around and it dawned on me that there were around 6 empty rows at the back of the plane. Given that this was an overnight flight, the opportunity to have somewhere to lie down was too good to pass up. Unfortunately, I was not the only one who had made this discovery. There were at least 7 other people who noticed this and, with movie-like timing, we all realised that we had competition. Our eyes narrowed simultaneously and the stand-off music from 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly' played over the tannoy. The fact that we were mid-take off and couldn’t leave our seats only added to the suspense. All eyes were directed towards the fasten seatbelts sign when one enterprising soul decided to risk the wrath of the Russian air hostesses and make a break for it. I expected him to melt like one of the Nazi’s at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, such was the intensity of the air hostesses glare but he survived and claimed his row. The pressure was on and when the seat-belt light went off it was it was every man for himself. Unfortunately I had been too focussed on said light and had failed to remember that I didn’t have an aisle seat. Panic set in as I realised too late that there was a elderly gentleman blocking my way like a geriatric Great Wall of China. For a moment I considered vaulting over him but I had flashes of the following days’ headlines which would no doubt have read ‘elderly man killed by airplane acrobatic antics’. So with a wistful glance back at the triumphant people who would have an excellent night’s rest in their empty rows, I settled into my seat and tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep.

Arriving in Moscow at 5:30am, I stumbled bleary-eyed from the plane tried to prepare myself for the mental and physical challenge of spending 15 hours in an airport (an airport with the most unfriendly staff in the world I might add) The first obstacle was Russian transit passport control. As I shuffled up to the desk I was met with a stare that told me this airport employee was blaming me for the fact that he had to be there at this un-Godly hour. Given that I appeared to be the only person from my flight in transit I couldn’t help but agree with him. I tentatively handed over my passport and the man (let’s call him Igor) glanced at it, and then back to me, then back at the passport. Gradually, a look began to spread across Igor’s face that appeared to be part confusion and part malice. Then he said (in his strong Russian accent, which immediately made me picture him as a movie villain) “This not your face”. Naturally I was somewhat puzzled by this and replied, eloquently and incisively, “erm, yes it is”. Admittedly, I am 6 years older than I was when I got my passport and age has naturally taken its toll, but I don’t look that different. After a verbal sparring match in which he deftly parried my increasingly exacerbated retorts with shrugs and grunts, Igor evidently got bored and decided to let me through.

My 15 hours in purgatory were spent infuriating the cleaning staff by consistently lying down to sleep on spots that they were apparently desperate to clean. As soon as I would lie down in a corner somewhere, a cleaner would instantly appear and start attempting to run over my feet with their cleaning trolley in an attempt to get me to move. In between bouts of being assaulted by disgruntled employees, I tried to entertain myself as best I could. In the end, I spent most of the day slumped in a chair looking somewhat catatonic and wondering if death was a better alternative to this living hell populated by dour Russians. Time stubbornly refused to go by quickly but eventually I was sitting on a plane and heading to Mongolia.
Descending over Mongolia’s rolling hills and steppe as dawn broke reminded why I love this place and I began to think about all the amazing things I would see and do over the next year. As I did a broad smile spread across my face, so broad in fact that the lady sitting next to me looked distinctly disquieted. Clearly she must have thought I was nuttier than a bag of squirrel crap. I am willingly spending another winter in Mongolia so she might be right.