Inner Mongolia and shattered dreams

The name Inner Mongolia conjures up vast beautiful grasslands, nomadic herders, and yaks roaming around along with wild horses. How wrong can we be. Arriving in Hohhot (Huhehaote in Chinese) we were greeted by an industrial boomtown that looks nothing like what we imagined it to be. Checking in to the hotel was painful enough, we were complacent in Beijing with our (Olympic) English-speaking staff who were used to having foreign guests. We thought we knew enough Chinese. It was almost impossible to communicate. The accent was so different here, so we tried to console our own stupidity. They guy who helped us checked in spoke as if Chinese language is so logically easy that it's unacceptable that we couldn't get a word that he was saying. He called someone on the phone, who translated the whole process to Usman (Usman's better at understanding Chinglish than me). When we checked in to our room, the guy he wouldn't leave and kept on saying things. He left after a few minutes muttering the most complex Mandarin on the planet. Only word I got was "xiaojie" which means "girl/young lady". So I told Usman he might've meant prostitutes or something. I couldn't be more wrong - he came back, brought some soap and towels.

The Chinglish translater (told us her name was Mary) later came to the hotel to sell her "grasslands tour". She proper scammed us that ogress of a woman. For a very expensive price, she promised a halal meal for our lunch and a two-day tour for just the two of us. When she came back next morning for the tour, she said there'll be other people who'll join us on the trip. We just said yea fine. Whatever right. It wasn't that big a deal anyway. (we later learned that they were the manager's family members or something). On the van, she spoke ceaselessly. Her Chinglish was not that annoying, it was her invasion of our personal space that annoyed me. It feels like she was right in front of our faces. Usman quickly descended on to a pretentious sleep, so I had to be the polite one nodding for few hours to her fake affinity for Mongol culture.

When we got to the supposedly Mongol camp, we were disappointed to learn that it was not an authentic nomadic settlement. The Mongol yurts are built on concrete bases and there was karaoke. The grasslands were pitiful and there were several of the same disneyfied tourist villages dotting around the area. Mary quickly led us to the horses and in her own sick psychological way pressured us to rent the horses for extortionate prices. We haggled for so long and were almost gonna leave it. We managed to reduce the price but it was still so expensive.

The "herdsman" (a full-time Disney costume-wearing Mongol) brought us to what they claim as "his house" where we had some tea and cookies. He then brought us to a place where they thought the grass is long and was the most scenic - it wasn't. Everything was artificial so we thought the stupidly expensive horse ride was almost pointless. They were going to bring us to a lake which was again "scenic" but we couldn't be arsed so we told him we want to go back to the (concrete) camp.

Coming back, Mary told us we have to pay extra for the mutton that they have prepared for us. From the way she was persuading us, we knew she doesn't know shit about halal meat and that her greedy hungry eyes were trying her luck with scamming us for the third time. We told her not to bother ordering it, we'll just eat the veggies. The mutton came anyway. we refused to touch it. After we had lunch she came back with another mind-boggling attitude, she was persuading us to go back to the city and cut the trip short. She said she'll refund almost half what we paid. We gladly accepted and then left her to wander around the grasslands.

We watched a fake Mongolian wrestling match and horse race which was quite entertaining despite the lukewarm response from the Chinese tourists. Mary then called us to speak to us again. I knew there was something wrong. She said she can't give the money back and we have to stay in the fake yurts as we've paid it. She was leaving us on our own with a mute guide (she didn't seem to speak Chinese or English or Chinglish). So if we still wanted to leave she said we'll only get 10 quid back. We were too exhausted to maul her onto the ground and rip her throat out, so we just agreed to go back to the city and get the measly 10 quid back. She must've been so rich on one day, she couldn't be bothered to be our guide in a stupid Disney-yurt. She must've been imagining the countless things she could do with the money all day. Bitch.


-Ihsan