So on Friday my students took me to Manzir Khiid, a Buddhist monastery about 35 miles from Ulaanbaatar. They wanted to take me to Gachuurt, where they would show me the �Mongolian hotel� that features concrete yurts and a replica of a fountain built in Chinggis Khan�s era. When was this �hotel� built? 1740? 1933? Nope, 2004. No thank you.
So we went to Manzir Khiid. The first part of the day was lovely. For the first time in months the coal-smoke from the power plants blew away from UB, not into it. I got to sit in front, on the left-side. Most Mongolians buy Toyotas from Japan, which means the steering wheel is on the right-hand side. This makes it nerve-wracking when the driver wants to pass. He pretty much had to inch his SUV out until we were fully in the left-lane just to see if any cars were there. And, if you�ve been reading my earlier posts, Mongols just LOVE to pass.
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Manzir Khiid is nestled in a valley among healthy looking fir and birch trees. This meant you had to pay to go there. At the gate, the ticket-lady squinted and saw me in the passenger seat. So it would be 500tg for the Mongolians in the car, and 2000tg for the �Yellow-Head.� I�ve come to understand foreigners in UB are all called �yellow-heads,� even if we�re brunette. Anyway, it is this �dual-pricing� system that will eventually lead to Mongolia�s ruin. First off, a country like Mongolia (like Greenland or Tibet) will be mainly reliant on tourist dollars to float their boat in the next ten or twenty years. After 20 years they will have constructed a 300-foot tall statue of Chinggis Khan in downtown UB (and will once again rule the known world). But until then, tourism is their crook, as nasty as that will be.
Second, it�s basically racism. I knew it was racism (felt it, too) when the lady squinted at me. She was judging me by the color of my skin, making me aware of my race, making me aware of the consequences of that (quadruple the fee for the �yellow-head�). I�m not good at definitions, but that sounds like a pretty good definition of racist discrimination. When Mongolians visit Yellowstone National Park (they never will, they only want to go to New York City and our Capital City), but when they do, they will be utterly confused when the park ranger demands $10. �What? No discount for our Asian faces? Look, Mister Ranger, look at the color of my skin�do you really think I can afford ten bucks to enter your park?� Quite frankly, it makes me feel unwelcome in this country to be judged in such a way. Many Koreans live in Mongolia, but they are charged the same as Mongols because there�s no way to tell they�re not Mongols. Even just the touristic Japanese aren�t charged triple. And it�s not like in China, where only foolish foreigners are charged twice what they should be paying. This �dual-pricing� system is government mandated. If you don�t pay the price according to your skin, then you can�t enter this temple, this national park, this cinema. The only way to change this form of racism is to politely decline. Don�t go to Mongolia. But if you do, let them know that you feel unwelcome every time they pull this crap on you. And when you return, write a thoughtful letter to the Mongolian Tourism Board (don�t address it to their Parliament�they�re busy deciding on how tall the Chinggis Khan statue should be).
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After a lovely hike up to the monastery, and watching Mongolians huff and puff up a meager slope (UB Mongols aren�t known for walking any further than the distance between their house and their car or bus-stop), I got to witness another reason Mongolia�s tourism industry is all wrong.
I was staring at the white two-humped camel that a man was trying to get people to ride when a huge, red, heavy-duty tour bus pulled into the parking lot. The name on the side summed it up best: Rotel Tours. Rotel being a combination of �Road� and �Hotel.� About 15 sweaty, stinky German tourists disembarked and beelined for the museum. The bus would only stay for 45 minutes. These tourists had boarded the bus in Berlin only two weeks ago, for all I knew. The Rotel looked like it could handle just about any terrain. The first half was your typical tour bus with large windows. The last half was cabin-space. I imagined these 50 and 60 year old wealthy Germans sleeping bunk-style and had to laugh. They looked so bent out of shape, so sleep-deprived. And I thought: this is the future of Mongolians tourism. Forget about the hassle of rounding up a private Jeep, dealing with the inevitable Mongol breakdowns-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. This bus was made for long pit-stops. It was the equivalent of a half-million dollar motorhome cruising America. In Mongolia, a motorhome wouldn�t last two seconds. But the Rotel bus was the answer. You would have all the luxuries of the tour bus: see the countryside from an air-conditioned cabin, don�t meet/talk with locals, have guides explain everything until you wished he�d shut-up, never have to make eye contact with anyone you don�t want to, never stray from the itinerary, be back on the bus in a half hour, lunch will be provided courtesy of Whichever Restaurant Will Serve Us Food We�re Familiar With (plus one OPTIONAL side-dish of local food�sniff and pass to next person.)
Anyway, if this whole racist issue isn�t resolved, I certainly would rather hide on a bus when entering a national park. Better to pay all my money upfront to the tour provider, to keep locals out of the tourist loot, to make sure none of those nasty Mongolian geezers buy booze with my hard earned money.
If the Mongols want to judge my skin, they won�t get my greenbacks.
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