Denali 12 Weeks PREGNANT! // Rich back from Mongolia

That's right! We have our second child well on the way. Denali has endured another battle with morning sickness, however, this time she affirms it isn't as bad as last time. To me it sounds just as bad when she's vomiting into a bucket at 7am! We get the feeling it will be a boy, but this time round we are not going to find out before the birth so it's anyone's guess really. We know Sophie will be very excited to have a little baby to play with, so we are looking forward to the 2008 due date of February 5th.

Sophie loves the transformers top her Daddy made for her

_______________________________________________________________________________________ I went to Mongolia on July 11 to visit my parents in the capital Ulaanbaatar.

Ulaanbaatar panorama

I sent the following FOUR email updates to a few of you. I have re-edited these for the blog and have written a heap, so just look at the pictures if you can't be bothered reading it all.

DAY ONE:
Today we did a tour of the city. We started by heading up a valley just north of the city centre and into the city's biggest Ger district, where 250,000 people live in dense filthy conditions. While we were there the city was hit by a thunder storm and the heavens opened up above us. For the first time in my life, I experienced a flash flood. The Ger district we were in turned to a river of mud and rubbish within 10 mins. I got good (although shakey) footage of the mud flows heading down the valley.

Homeless man asleep outside Mum & Dad's apartment

The rain had stopped by the time we got back into the city 10mins later. We went out for lunch to a Korean restaurant. The food was really delicious and we ordered 4 plates of various dishes - things like spicey beef, satay beef hot plate, sweet and sour chicken and one other that I can't remember the name of, but had a subtle aniseed taste to it (chicken). We also had these real nice pure lemon hot drinks. Sounds odd, but damn they were good. All cost about $14 to feed 4 of us... because Mum and Dad have a 16 year old girl - Katie with them at the moment. She is the daughter of one Mum and Dad's friends from back in the day who is in Mongolia to volunteer at the World Vision kids summer camps.

World Vision Parents Income Generation Centre

Making felt in WVs IGC

Anyway, after lunch we took a drive just south of the city centre to where Mum teaches. We saw a giant gold Buddha statue and the Russian Monument that overlooks the city.

Russian Monument mural

View from Russian Monument

All the Mongs are on summer holidays now so heaps of them head out of the city and go camping beside the rivers. It's real cool to see actually and it must be a wonderful feeling knowing that you are free to roam wherever you please in unfenced open countryside.

Then we headed back into town and went to a large department store that had 6 floors of goods on sale. I bought a new North Face windstopper and some nice summer pants of the same brand and of course the compulsory Mongolian tourists t-shirt. The windstopper was on sale at 50% off - a BARGAIN at only $15!!! The Pants were $25 and the tshirt $9.

On the 6th floor of this building they have Mongolian souvenirs. So much cool stuff. I want to bring back an awesome Mongolian knife too, and maybe a couple of other wee nik naks if I think they won't look too tacky. But I will wait to buy that stuff until the end of my trip, because they aren't essentials... but just damn cool. Tomorrow we are going to see a Chinngis Khan battle charge, where hundreds of horsemen donned with ancient battle armour charge eachother Lord of the Rings style. I can't wait to film that tomorrow.

Katie pointed out to me today that none of the Mongolians have butts. So I have to confess to you that I was staring quite unashamedly at female... and male bottoms today to determine whether Katie's claim was true or not. Turns out it's true.


DAY TWO:
Went to the DVD store this morning. Holy shit they have a lot... but of lot of them I've seen. Only bought 32 in the end. I think that it will be easier for people just to copy them from me in NZ rather than me buy doubles or triples of everything, when I am unsure whether you have seen it or even want it.

Went about an hour south of Ulaanbaatar (UB) to a random great expanse of pasture lands where a large stadium had been built for the Chinngis Khan cavelry show.

At the entrance to the cavelry show

It was real cool. Hundreds of men in full armour racing at full pelt on horseback reinacting battle scenes, having sword fights, archery competitions, charging each other etc... Went on for about 1 and a half hours. I wanted to leave the stadium seats to get a better filming spot, but wasn't allowed. So once again, I got some pretty cool stuff, but it's all a bit shakey because I didn't have a tripod... and the markets were shut today and I couldn't get one anyway.


They played epic mongolian battle music in the stands which seemed to be in sync with the battles. At one point, near the beginning of the battle, where each side were beginning to face-off they blasted the 300 theme song... which I am sure no one was aware of. It was flippin cool... a little out of place perhaps... but still real cool. They also played sound fx of men gagging and screaming and swords clashing. That was pretty funny. I upped the shutter speed on the camera and tried to emulate the shakey 300 battle shots as best I good.



Afterwards, we went to see some of the street kids that World Vision have taken under their wing. WV have assembled a talented choir group who left for Korea tonight for competitions, which they do very well at apparently. So we did some interviews and other filming at the airport as they waited for their flights. An airport security guard, a short fat scowling Mongol woman came over and told me to stop filming in the airport. I stopped... for a bit and then continued filming. She came over again and told me off a second time, so I stopped for good. For the remainder of the our time at the airport with the kids this woman followed me around trying to see if the camera was on to catch me out again. I didn't want to mess with her anymore though as she had bigger forearms than me and looked as if she could knock me out or something.

Homeless man asleep on traffic island

Wasn't that hot today. Only about 24 degrees. No rain either. Just towering cumulo-nimbus clouds over the city all day. These massive storm clouds sat still all day and just got bigger and bigger. They looked real cool sitting on the horizon behind the cavelry charge too.


DAYS THREE & FOUR:
Yesterday we went to a national park about an hour from UB. It was real beautiful. A truly prehistoric landscape. Giant rock formations in great expanses of open valleys.

National Park panorama

Reminded me of things I have read and seen about Yosemete park in the states. We saw the first Ger camp that had been set up for tourists. They had built large concrete dinosaur statues outisde the camp to commemorate the dinosaur bones found in the area.

We then went to turtle rock... a large rock which looks like... do I need to say it??

Turtle Rock
To get a sense of scale, find the man and horse at the base of the rock, off centre right.

Dad drove up to this awesome ridgeline which overlooked turtle rock and a monestary. We went to the national park with a few of Dads co-workers and their kids. A Nigerian family, a British couple and an Australian couple. One of the kids from the Nigerian family had her first camel ride. As the camel rose to its feet it lurched forward and this girl yelled out loudly in front of everyone "Oh F@#K!" The rest of her brothers and sisters and myself starting cracking up and her father looked somewhat embarrassed.

I had my first camel ride too, as did Katie. It was real fun and suprisingly comfortable. They seem to glid over the land a lot smoother than a horse... but that I suppose is obvious when you see how tall they are and how padded their hooves are (do camels have hooves???).

Katie's first Camel mount

We were out at the park all day. I held a bloody heavy eagle, we ate rich Russian icecreams for 50cents, and checked out an international five star luxery resort being built deep in the park. Pretty nice day overall.


We also checked out a 75m Chinggis Khan statue that is being built randomly on a hill in the countryside. It is friggin massive. The photos below were taken a week before I was in Mongolia. The statue had scaffolding all around it when I was there.


They are putting nice restaurants underneith the statue and you can take a lift up the inside of Chinggis' horses tail to overlook the plains that lead to Chinggis' birth place. Close to the statue is an abandoned BBC film set. Apparently they figured it was chaper to build a portion of the Great Wall of China than go there to film it. Makes sense if you are making a documentary about Chinggis Khan and all your filming is in Mongolia.

More of the BBC film set. In the background you can see the Chinggis Khan statue

So, there's this large abandoned film set still there. There was a tourist group there all trying to fire arrows over the film set wall from some distance back. One of the Mongolian guides gave me ago at firing an arrow over the wall. But it didn't go over the wall... it hit near the top and tumbled to the ground. Apparently I did pretty well though for my first time with a Mongolian bow and arrow.


Today we went clothes shopping. After that we went out to a World Vision summer camp, which is where most of the street kids under WVs care spend the summer holidays, and where Katie is working. Did a bit of filming there before heading back to UB. We picked up one of Dad's friends Kurian - a real nice Indian fellow. I really wanted to have some Indian food here, so he took us out to Hazra restaurant for a fantastic meal.

It's likely we will go out of the city for a few days somewhere soon, but we are still deciding where. I am keen on going into the Gobi Desert for two nights at a Ger camp, or up to the Russian border. We'll see.


TRIP TO THE GOBI DESERT:
On Wednesday morning we caught the Trans Siberian Express train deep into the Gobi Desert, to a place called Sanchywn (or something like that!).



The train ride took 10 HOURS! We had paid for a sleeper compartment for four people (Mum, Dad, myself and one of Dad's co-workers Tuvana). Two more of Dad's co-workers MC (26 year old, MC is short for a girls name I cannot spell nor pronounce) and Gerel (pronounced Gir-lay, 29 year old), and her son Bambar came too but travelled in a different compartment. The compartment was about 2m long and about 2.5m wide, with bunks on either side of the room.


We played cards for ages during the trip. We couldn't get the compartment window down very far - only bout 2 or 3 inches. If I laid down on one of the top bunks then I could feel a cool breeze... but soon the cool breeze turned into diesel fumes and grit. Aside from those initial complaints, the scenery was really spectacular... to me anyway.

Tuvana sheilding her lungs from diesel and grit with a wet wipe.

The Mongolian countryside consists almost entirely of shallow rolling hills and a few rivers. The countryside was unusually green for this time of year too, due to recent rainfall. The closer we got to the Gobi Desert the more barren and flat the landscape became, and yet I could still see the same amount of towns and herder families scattered about. The towns we passed through and stopped briefly at looked like... well Asian/Texas wild west towns. Most were mining communities. Some towns we passed by were abandoned Russian settlements leftover from pre Russian occupancy days. The Mongolians had torn down those townships after they had asked the Russians to leave the country... an event which apparently occured overnight.

We arrived in Sanchywn (population: 5000) at 9pm, and promptly went to look at the desert sunset.

Sanchwyn township panorama

The Russian Coma resting on a gentle slope above the township

Afterward we took a quick tour of the town centre and took some pictures at a fountain in the town's central park. We then checked in at a hotel and pretty much fainted from exhaustion at midnight.

The travelling party at the gates to the town centre park

After being captivated by the previous night's sunset, we got up at 4am to watch a desert sunrise, which to me was something pretty special. I have it on film too as timelapse, which I am looking forward to playing with back in NZ.

From left: Gerel, Tuvana, MC, Dad, Mum at sunrise

After that we had breakfast, then went to check out two museums in the township. The museums were amazing and had a wonderful collection of ancient armour and weaponry, stuffed wild animals, dinosaur bones, perfectly formed petrified wood, ancient scripts and poetry and some military history too.

We then piled into an old Russian Coma and headed out to explore some of the Gobi Desert. NOTE: When I say "Gobi Desert", I mean a tiny fraction of a gigantic desert. The Gobi is actually split into four or five 'Gobi's', which all have different things to look at and different terrain. Anyway, we raced out to explore the region. The old Coma was bouncing around like a bloody bull with a spear in its backside... due to the obvious lack of tarsealed roads. We were instead navigating our way through tracks in the dust. As I was saying though, the Coma was bouncing all over the place and then after 30 mins of travel we heard the rear-left tyre pop and the van finally came to a halt at the top of a long gentle slope.

Changing the tyre

At this point, Mum starts panicking that we're gonna be stuck out in the desert and left to die. I... for some reason thought it was kinda funny. Luckily the driver(s) had a spare (a couple of spares), and got to work cranking up the Russian to change its tyre. The whole process took about 20mins... most of which I have on film. The first thing we went to look at was a tiny buddhist settlement that was being re-built. Don't know how they survive all the way out in the desert... but I think they had access to underground rivers nearby... or so one local Mongolian tried to tell me. They had built some statues and erected some sort of salute to breasts too (see photo).


We then went and saw a large site of petrified wood... a lot of which had been stolen.

Navigating rough terrain in the Coma.

We went and saw an archeological site where they had uncovered dinosaur bones. That was real cool, just seeing the bones out in the open like that. We saw a couple of partial skelletons, one of which clearly looked like a dinosaur spine (in my expert opinion). After the bones we went to some desert caves that had been used as hiding places from Russian religious cleansing attacks, and are now used as places of meditation and for buddhist offerings.


We passed through one hole in a rock which is said to make you feel re-born... and it certainly feels like it after squeezing through it! I have no idea where we went next, but it was some sort of large buddhist worship and offering site (it's best to just show you photos... but I didn't take many as most of this trip I captured on film).

Before having lunch we went out to see the only small cluster of Gobi trees in this part of the desert. They were situated in a small green grassed oasis in the middle of a wide barren plain. We found a small waterhole there and picked strange wiggling shrimp-looking worms out of the mud. We also spotted herds of wild camels and heaps of lizards. I was looking out for wolves (as they are my favourite animal), but the only wolf I saw though was dead, gutted, skinned and hanging on a post outside a Ger.


We had lunch at a tourist Ger camp not far from the Oasis, then went to visit a local herder family who let us ride their camels and generally ask questions about the herder lifestyle.


This particular herder family had been contracted (I think) by the Ger camp to provide people with such an experience, but it was still pretty cool, because the eldest Herder (the grandfather, 85years old) had a lot of interesting things to talk about... none of which I listened too because I was fliming and drinking the milk he gave us. All I heard was that it hadn't rained for 5 years in this part of the Gobi - the longest time without rain in his life.

We drove back to the township for dinner. Before getting on the train to head back to UB, we washed ourselves down with wet wipes (which have proved invaluable in Mongolia!). I was covered in sand and dirt and grit from the day's escapades. The train ride home left at 9:15pm and it wasn't fun.

I could hardly sleep because the bed was only 1.5m long and very hard. Diesel fumes and grit engulfed the compartment once again for the entire trip. Furthermore, it started off really hot, then poured with rain once we were out of the Gobi and became rapidly colder. I must have passed out from the fumes because I woke up at 6:30am with sunlight streaming into the compartment... with two hours left of the journey. We played cards until the train finally reached UB. I was first off the train, shamelessly elbowing a small child out of the way.

All up though, the trip was fun, and the exploration tour of the Gobi was fantastic. At first the Gobi (well this tiny fraction that we saw) seemed unreal, empty and bland. By the time we left I could see that it is a place full of life and activity and culture and ancient history. It's a stunning, intriguing place to visit. But you gotta be willing to see it that way and take it all in... and take plenty of wet wipes, truck loads of water and a change of clothes! Otherwise the Gobi will turn out to be a hot, uncomfortable, boring place... WHICH IT REALLY ISN'T!

We got back to Mum and Dad's apartment at about 9:30am to discover there was no hot water to shower with. I endured a freezing shower instead because I was desperate to wash all the grime away. I then went out to town to do the last bits of shopping.

Mum and Dad's apartment block

Probably saw the gross-est thing in my life today. We were passing the back of an old building where a homeless family live. At 1pm, in broad daylight, the mother and father of this homeless family were having sex in an old sack. They were real dirty and sweaty... and it was just... well gross. I don't have any photos of that to show you though. It's 11pm now and I'm buggered.



That's all I really feel like writing about Mongolia. It's a wonderful place to visit. Rich in culture, history, beautiful scenery and lovely people. I can highly recommend you visit the place sometime.

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I was very happy to return home to see Sophie and Denali. They had spent three weeks in Christchurch while I was away. Sophie had changed so much by the time I got back. She was bum shuffling all round the place. She had added quite a few new words to her vocabulary. She seemed a lot more talkative and engaging too.

Here are some photos Denali took in Christchurch...



I went back to work on Thursday 26 July (the day after I returned to NZ). Work is busy as usual and there is quite the back log of work waiting!. We are moving premises and upgrading all our Avid suites too. I am currently working on one of the new quad-core suites and haven't had any issues yet. I have a big Tourism NZ job going at the moment.

In other news, my mate Neil is looking for a job here in Wellington. The company he was working for closed recently after the death of one of the directors. Please keep your ears to the ground for any film/video related jobs for him. Send them through to me at lordbiggus@gmail.com and I will forward them on.