1 in 4 of us are related to Gengkhis Kahn!

YOU could be my great-venti-grande-tall son.........

Inner Mongolia is situated at the north of China. It is still within China and you do not have to get a visa! So, what does 'Nei Menggu' have to offer?

The journey started with this man, our tour guide who is from Hoh-Hot, the capital of Inner Mongolia.

I'm Soh-Hot.

First stop was the 'Hanging Temple' situated in Da Tong. If you look closely, you must have thought "hey, seen this somewhere before!". Ah Hah! many films were made with this backdrop to potray the 'Hans' who lived in mountains. The temple has 3 - Taoism, Buddhism & thrown in some Confucion just to confuse you further.

Take a guess which is the Confucian temple......

After paying our respects (and asking for 4D number), we continued our journey further up which took another 4 hours of bus ride ON TOP of the 7 hour bus ride we endured from Beijing.

Meet Off! He OFFten sleeps..... (no kidding, his name is really 'OFF')

We then proceeded to the 'Cave of many Buddhas'. Apparently, no one knows who carved the stons but it was believed that it was carved xxxx BC! Big Buddha, small Buddha and even baby Buddhas were all carved out along the entire cave....

Yo wassup! I'm Buddha.....

Its a shame that just right outside the area, there were many local chinese people selling fake goods and tourist souveniers that you just know it will break once you bag it.... And the most disturbing sight was this.....

Foong condemns animal cruelty.

After a few more hours of driving, we finally reached the hotel and had a nice hot Mongolian meal! Although everything seems to evolve around onions, chilly, oil and salt! O_O

The monks would have been very dissapointed with us for wasting food......

The next day, we headed off to the grasslands! And there we stayed in a Yurt (a tent with NO heating, NO toilet, NO bed and NO mongolian women) where we experienced Mongolian life. Although the tent may sound as bad as living with your in-laws, it was a sweeeeet experience to enjoy with friends whom you just met 1 week ago. :D

The Grassland! and to be honest, its a fantastic feeling to just pee out in the wide open grassland....

Mongolian wrestling is to resolve who will get the lady to go boom boom.

We tried really hard to be local.....

This is the Yurt of the Village Chief..... dont mess with it....

So the Yurt turned out to be damm cold (it was almost 0 Celcius in the night) and sucks to not be able to shower when you've been riding on horses all day, covered in sand and dried horse shit everytime the wind blows.....

We then set off to the Mongolian dessert!

The Gobi Dessert!

Meet Joe, he has nice set of teeth!


Meet the team: (From left to right)
Standing: Callie (Mas), Haolu (Italy), Sonia (Mas), Lisa (Germany), Jason (HK), Jeff (US), Eric (Canada), Patrick (Phillipines), Olivier (France), KimChi 1(Korea), KimChi 2(Korea), ChupChang (Thailand)
Squating/Kneeling: Paul (US), Nick (HK), Jessie (Australia)
Seated: Asaf (US), KimChi 3 (Korea), Off (Thailand), KimChi 4 (Korea), Christine (France), Dew (Thailand), Veronique (Hainan/Canada), Me, Soh-Hot (our tour guide)

So, we ended the night with some drinks and bon-fire dancing with mongolian beer. It was a good holiday (excluding the amount of horse shit and camel shit we had to smell through out the trip), would recommend to go with an agent as it is nearly impossible to drive there by yourself. Furthermore, the agents can make sure that you that get conned MORE than you should be conned. :)

Woohoo! I made RMB 19,780 (23 x RMB 860)!!! Con your money! yeah!


The Emcee decided to show off his Mongolian-kiss-the-floor-with-legs-in-air...



I end my entry here with a lesson I learnt from the Mongols. Let me know if you can crack what it means!! :)
The same sky, the same love to the same home.