Off the Wall

Distance in Mongolia is measured by time rather than kilometres, a direct symptom of the lack of actual tarmacadamed roads. Instead, the plains are crisscrossed with swirling tracks that intertwine and then span out in every direction like endless fingers.  Much like the deserts of the Middle East, you can’t help but wonder how people manage to find their way home?  Clearly the process is partly facilitated by an genetic radar that hones in on the 4th clump of bushes over the 5th hill, behind the eagle-shaped outcrop 210 paces east of the ovoo by Horse Skull Valley, then turns to the second star on the right and straight till morning.

We would drive for hours on end, hill melding with hill, ovoo with ovoo, callous building upon callous on my already harassed backside which had a tough time getting used to the  UAZ experience. The level of bump and shake often had me thinking that if I were a bottle of champagne, somebody was gonna lose an eye soon.

The Russian van had definitely seen better days. However, it was the best we could afford, and came complete with engine crank, a high wheel base and the capacity for 4-wheel drive which had to be switched to manually by virtue of unscrewing the wheel axle cover thingy, inserting some kind of metal-toothed gear yoke, and then closing everything off again. A wonderfully clear and mechanically correct description I realize, one completely commensurate with my expertise level.

Happily, our driver, who smoked a lot, smiled little and talked less, knew exactly what he was doing.  Just as well considering the fact that we would break down at least once a day and find ourselves atop some hill in the middle of the middle of nowhere, passenger seat plonked on the grass, watching his little behind wiggling side to side while he did another MacGyver on that ancient engine.

The trip west was long and tortuous, broken only by occasional stops in frontier towns for lunch meat. Meat, meat, meat, or should I say fat, grizzle, “bleargh”. By the time we reached Kharkhorin my innards were not happy with me.

‘Dysentery’ is a manageable thing when you are in the outback, where the privacy of the wilds and the calming whispering of the wind shaken leaves hypnotized slightly, taking your mind off the insatiable cramping, and a cool breeze would wipe your sweating brow and quivering backside.  In the outhouse of a central Mongolian town, it’s a whole other scenario.

My first experience of an outhouse was somewhat misleading and came about 9 hours outside UB near the monastery of Amar Bayasgalant. We stayed the night beside the monastery, within the half-heartedly picket-fenced garden of a ger lodge. The garden was filled with curiosities from a simple outdoor sink freestanding in the middle of the garden, to a bread bin that stood atop a fence post at the end of the garden.  At first I thought it was an inventive kind of letterbox, but when I opened it, discovered it was a tad more industrious than that, housing a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a tube of paste.

Of course the biggest curiosity was the wooden outhouse at the end of the garden. In my pre-malfunctioning bowels state, it wasn’t such a bad experience. It  had a wooden floor with a simple hole cut in the middle over which one had to balance, and try to aim with consideration.  It even had a door! It was a cold night, it had been raining, so the aroma was certainly not craw grasping. To be fair, I had been on worse squatters in my time.

As the days passed and my intestines turned into a gurgling mass of slime, the outhouses became less and less savoury, each visit leaving me counting the ever increasing costs of the therapy I was going to need when I got home.

In its more common appearance, a Mongolian outhouse is a barely 3 walled box, occasionally with a roof, and two four by four planks laid over a minimum two metre deep square hole. Now I say two metre deep, but that depth is approximately measured, and only to the top of the layers of human waste that you try to pretend is not there.

They often come in twos.

Leaving the black market area of Kharkorum, and overcome by urgency, I found myself running through the shanty and backstreets, following the stench to my nearest and only hope of privacy. I thanked God that he blessed me with balance as I dropped my pants at speed while precariously teetering on the two planks that stretched over the generations of excrement.   I spread out my arms to the spaced slat walls on either side, steadying myself before the impending explosion. I held my breath and closed my eyes trying to separate myself from the aroma of rotting lunch meat permeating up from the abyss, and the excruciating, cascading wave that was rapidly making its way through my belly towards my rear end.

“There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!”

My whispered repetitious attempt at self-hypnosis was temporarily broken by the sounds of exertion followed by relief . Still clinging on to the walls for dear life, nails embedded into the wood, I turned to see a squatting local through the gaps in the slats on the adjoining outhouse. A little vein pulsated on his purple temple as he pushed and parped. My desire to plug my ears against his inner workings with my splinter imbued fingers was swiftly overtaken by my own personal Vesuvius.

The rest is a blur.

I came round to the sound of my neighbour loosing a final sigh of contentment, zipping up his pants, and passing me by with a whistle, and not so much as a ‘How do you do?’

I wiped the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my jacket, crossed my arms over my knees, resting in my squat while I caught my breath and thanked the sweet baby Jesus that I was still alive. I felt a cool breeze about my quivering backside, but the associated  buzzing soon made me realize it wasn’t the wind.  I nearly lost myself in the pit as I pulled my pants up while simultaneously throwing myself out of the horror chamber.

Picking myself up out of my stumble, squinting in the sunlight, the sound of buzzing fading, I brushed myself down, pulled on my sunglasses, and did a walk back to the UAZ of which John Wayne himself would have been proud.

While standing by our van waiting for our guide, Soyola, to make his way back, a passing drunk stopped dead in his tracks. With a somewhat shocked look on his face, he bent his knees slightly and pointed at me. “Michael”, he said hoarsely, looking around him as if for clarification and then back to me. I knew I looked a tad dishevelled after my ‘personal moment’, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was up with him. He continued to point and in my paranoid state I attempted to refix my black hair back into its ponytail.

“Michael, Michael”, he shouted again and then walked at me, his drunken body bent at an almost a 45 degree angle and his arm outstretched for a handshake.  “Sainbano”, I said as I held out mine and he grabbed it. Shaking it vigorously with his other hand clasped over our two, he began to babble at me in Mongolian. My arm was almost loosed from its socket by the time Soyola finally made his way to us. The drunk let go of my hand and excitedly turned to our guide, babbling and pointing at me with little drunken giggles, occasionally separated by more Michaels.

Before shooing the drunk away, Soyola managed to translate his ramblings for me. Between the sunglasses, black hair, and diarrhoea exacerbated paleness, the poor man had thought me Michael Jackson, alive and roaming the dirt tracks of Mongolia.

I began to laugh, wondering when exactly Michael had invested in a boob job, but then my belly started to growl at me again. Unwilling to put myself through another outhouse experience that day, I managed to persuade everyone it was time to leave.

“Pedal to the metal MacGyver, fast as you can to the second star on the right and straight on until that 4th clump of bushes over the  hill there, if you please!”

Remembering The Bus Journey

We arrived into Cambodia at lunchtime via Phnom Penh airport, from Vientiane in Laos. Time was tight, but we were anxious to get to Sisowith Quay to see if it were possible to catch a bus straight to Siem Reap. All indications were that we were chasing rainbows, but luck presented us with a wonderful Tuk Tuk driver who pumped his lawnmower engine to the max and tout de suite, took us to our destination.

Of course, as any guide or forum entry will tell you, our planned route was such a popular one that it was necessary to book seats in advance. All the tourist buses were full to the brim. Nonetheless, our tireless driver went from point to point around the Sisowith area to try to find us some seats. Ultimately, a spot was found for us on a local bus. While we knew it would probably take us anything up to 7 hours on one of these things, we were simply relieved to be on our way. We gratefully thanked our driver with an extra few dollars, worth it for the smile alone, and got on board leaving him with our names and regards.

Surprisingly, the bus journey was smooth and much quicker than anticipated. The vehicle itself was half empty, unlike the tourist versions that we had been trying to board. The leather seats were pockmarked and the faux Victorian-like fringed curtains faintly musty, but, ignoring the local persistently staring at us from behind his surgical mask, the passage was still surprisingly comfortable. The Cambodian countryside was a picture of quiet simplicity, peppered with farming fields and stilted houses under which families gathered to eat and socialize. After a while, it began to pass us by in a bit of a haze, as our heavy eyes fell from the exhaustion of our earlier journey.

We paused at a couple of road stops along the way where I was amused by Una and Ruth's horror at the boiled, upturned, kumquat decorated turtles, and locals chowing down on deep fried crickets. The toothless old guy sitting in front of us seemed to be enjoying the bugs as he turned around to gives us grin while sucking in and gumming down on a grasshopper leg.

People got on, people got off, fruit sellers advertised their wares and small children tried to get a dollar out of you for the pleasure of using the squatter, everything on sale was four times what the local beside you was paying for the same thing, but then that's capitalism for you.

Back on the bus I watched the world go by and its colour change as the day moved on. Motorbikes are the main mode of transport here and minute by minute they passed us by carrying saffron wrapped monks or complete families. Every house had a squared sump pond, some full, some dry, and in most cases a cow and some foul. Flowers decorated each garden, and every 400 yards or so was a blue banner advertising the Peoples Communist Party.

After 5 hours of counting the dates above the doors of the stilted houses, we arrived in Siem Reap, just as dusk was settling in across the sky. The bus meandered its way up and down the red dust roads of the town which was much bigger than I expected, eventually pulling into a gated depot of sorts.
The gates were closed behind the bus while we got off and reclaimed our bags. When they were opened however, a sea of Tuk Tuk drivers swelled in on top of us, each trying to take out bags and insisting we go with them. Like a ray of sanity within the madness, miraculously, a kindly looking man appeared out of the cloud holding a sign with my name on it.


What a clever chap our Phnom Penh driver was. As soon as we had pulled off in the bus, he texted his buddy in Siem Reap with the bus number and our names. Believe me, right then and there, surrounded by a herd of over-eager and over-heated Tuk Tukkers, our new friend, Kosal, was welcome. The familiarity may have been fake, but it quickly freed us from a very surreal moment.

Happily, Kosal did not have any interest in trying to sell us a particular guest house. On the night we arrived, the town was particularly busy, but he patiently drove us around to more than a few different places of our choosing to try to find a bed. Eventually, we found a spot about 10 minutes walk from Bar Street, comfortable and clean, where we threw ourselves into a much overdue shower.

Kosal ended up becoming our guide and driver for the next 3 days we were there, and a fantastically patient one he was at that.