Inner Mongolia: The Beginning

Peach, Brad, and I decided to go to Inner Mongolia for the National Holiday because we thought it sounded awesome and thought it might not be quite as crowded as the rest of China. Usually this week is a nightmare to travel because the entire country plays "fruit basket turnover" since this is one of the only times people are allowed off work to travel home and visit their families. Brad and I took a bus to Wuhan (5 hrs) to meet Peach. Then we took an overnight train to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia (27 hrs). 32 hours! Geez!

We got in late that night, so we settled in our hotel and set out to find some food. All we could find was noodles. The next day we decided to explore Hohhot a little, but first we had to buy our train tickets to return home (you can't do it ahead of time or from another city). Buying tickets took the whole morning because the train station was overcrowded. Policemen tried in vain to hold back the crowds and create lines, but the system always fails and we ended up stampeding past the police who just laughed.

We finally got tickets and made our way to the Inner Mongolia Museum. It was actually very aesthetically pleasing and well put together, but it lacked in actual museum-ness. I guess it's just because I am highly skeptical that anything is really authentic here. There were several cool displays set up modeling traditional Mongolian customs and nomadic lifestyle. Little did we know this would be the only glimpse into true Mongolian culture we would get...

After we went to the museum, we went to look for lunch. We’d heard of a good lamb hotpot place, but once we got there we saw it was too expensive for our taste. By that time it was late afternoon and we couldn’t find any other restaurants, so we had noodles. Again. (Without meaning to, we became very Northern, eating noodles all the time instead of rice like in the Southern part of China.)

We only had time to visit one of the temples in Hohhot because they all close around 6. We went to DaZhao Temple, one of the most famous in Inner Mongolia. I feel that once you’ve been to one temple in China, you’ve been to all of them. They all have incense and tons of statues and Buddhas. We tried to ask some of the monks there questions about Buddhism to try to understand some of the background of our Chinese friends, but none of it really made sense to us. And I don’t think it makes sense to many Chinese either. It’s just something they’ve always done.

After we left the temple, we went to the Muslim district to walk around. We couldn’t look at the temple there because it was their time for prayer, so instead, we enjoyed some street snacks from a Muslim vendor and walked around the area.

For dinner we were set on finding a place to try the famous lamb hotpot, so Peach called around and we found Not the Same restaurant. It was delicious! They bring out a hotpot with two sides, one spicy, one not. Then you order whatever you want to put in it. For us, lots of lamb, tofu, potatoes, and spinach. Yummmm!