Bucket List, Mongolia Style...

Has anybody seen my nose?

(Bob and David model their fox hats)

I stopped off at the front desk at my hotel in Ulaanbaatar to ask about the day’s weather. I was dressed for the bitter cold, wearing a parka I had bought for $22 at a street market in Beijing, just before we left to come here.

It was February, and I was in the frozen country they used to call Outer Mongolia. I figured the weather would be no laughing matter here, in the “coldest capital in the world.”

“It is 26 degrees this morning, sir,” the desk clerk told me.

That’s all? Twenty-six degrees? A piece of cake, I thought, smugly pushing my way through the heavy front door and into the frosty outdoors.

In an instant, my nose froze. It broke off my face and fell to the ground, shattering into tinkling shards. A billion icy needles pierced my skin.

In full retreat, I spun around and pulled the door open again, leaving several of my fingers frozen solid to the metal handle. I ran back to the front desk, where a bemused traveler who was busy checking out looked at me with some sympathy.

“The clerk was telling you it was MINUS 26 degrees,” the man explained. “They don’t usually say the minus here, because in Mongolia, that’s just implied.”

So that was it. I was in a country where MINUS 26 degrees was simply called 26 degrees, and nobody had a problem with that. A brisk morning walk suddenly sounded like an expedition to the South Pole with Ernest Shackleton.

I asked the clerk where I could get some food.

“We’re currently serving our breakfast buffet, sir,” he said, gesturing toward the hotel restaurant.

I headed in that direction, hoping it would be better than last night’s dinner buffet, which had offered eight kinds of colorless boiled meat and absolutely no fruits or vegetables.

What I found was very similar to the dinner buffet. They had simply taken down the DINNER sign and propped a BREAKFAST sign amid the leftovers. The food itself never changed, only the name of the meal did.

I promise I am going somewhere good with this story, and there will even be audience participation. Hint: I haven’t got to the part about the buckets of barf, yet.

I was the Asia News Editor for Reuters, and I was traveling in Mongolia with David, our Beijing Bureau Chief. You should understand, this was our idea of a great time. David assured me our guides would know some good lunch places.

We spent the morning driving around, seeing the sights and meeting Mongolian big shots.

Much of the conversation centered around which massive power plants  were up and running that day, a good indication of whether there would be enough heat to keep us alive. Yesterday, such a topic would have seemed hopelessly abstract, but now, with a nose and two fingers missing, I was personally invested.

The restaurant our guides had in mind for lunch sounded wonderful. Sadly, it was closed, because it had no food.

We moved on to their Plan B.

Also closed. Also, no food.

Their third choice was open and serving, offering pretty much the same varieties of colorless boiled meat I had rejected at my hotel the night before. As I dug into lunch, I casually mentioned to our guides that there didn’t seem to be an abundance of fresh fruit or vegetables.

They laughed politely,  as though I had gotten off a really funny one-liner.

(My stirrup from Mongolia)

In the afternoon, our handlers took us to the apartment of a couple who were in the fox fur business. This seemed a little odd, because neither of us had mentioned having any interest in fur.

We drank tea, heard stories about the fur game, and then they said they wanted to give us a gift. We each got a fox fur hat. If we happened to want to give them $25 per hat, also as a gift,  that would be gratefully accepted. I wasn’t quite sure why nobody wanted to honestly admit they were just selling hats.

A personal side note: David’s wife, who was a poor sport, disposed of his hat 20 minutes after he brought it home to Beijing. Back in Hong Kong, my wife was far more understanding, offering a complex deal by which I could keep my hat just by promising never to wear it.

Several years later, my hat suddenly disappeared. Barbara said she had seen insects crawling in it, so she had thrown it away. That seemed like an over-reaction on her part. Surely, a big spritz of Raid would have made it as good as new.

Mongolia had very serious problems with violent crime, rampant unemployment and alcohol abuse. Our handlers made us promise to stay inside the hotel after dark, because young hoodlums, drunk on fermented mare’s milk, ruled the night streets.

Did I mention fermented mare’s milk?

(A glass of fermented mare’s milk)

We did venture out one night, finding almost no one there but the drunken ruffians . One of them, who looked like a wild Cossack, approached us and I saw a full-size cavalry saber swinging from his belt. That was when we remembered we had left something back in the hotel.

The next day, inquiring about the country’s rampant alcoholism, I was offered a tour of what was called a state-of-the-art treatment center. David and I were taken on an early-morning visit to a cinder block building painted a hideous shade of green. Once we were inside, they locked the doors behind us.

In the dim morning light, we saw a long, dark corridor lined with men. Each was holding a black plastic bucket, and we were told that the men had been given Antabuse – a prescription medication that makes you violently ill if you cave in to the temptation to drink alcohol.

Each man was then forced to take a long swig of vodka. When the Antabuse and vodka collided head-on, we understood what the buckets were for.

It was a perfect assault on our senses. Sound, sight and smell.

Our host tapped me on the shoulder and asked me not to take photos. I assured him that wouldn’t be a problem.

To this day, I recall every detail of our visit to the facility, but I can’t remember whether I ever wrote the story. It’s entirely possible I didn’t think I could do justice to the grotesque scene, and I just gave up.

You have all the details, feel free to write it yourself, right now. I can’t wait to see what you do with it.