Far Flung Forays

We came back from the South Island the last weekend of October, and Katy had three shifts before we started our next adventure.  Katy had 14 days off to take a licensure exam in Hawaii, which was a one day exam.  We decided to make a road trip out of it, getting to Hawaii via Auckland and then again getting back home.  One thing that I am noticing is that it is hard to get into a routine when we are never in New Plymouth for more than four nights at a time.  That is not something that I anticipated prior to this year.  I imagined that I would have a steady routine, and it would feel like there is a lot of spare time, and I would be able to get done every thing that I want.  That is not the case.

We left in the evening heading up to the Waitomo region and planned to do some camping.  We discovered that the site we thought we were going to camp at only allowed campervans, and there were not any cheap campsites in the area.  We discovered on CamperMate that the Oparau Roadhouse, which is basically New Zealand’s version of Woody’s, had free camping, and we were very hesitant at first but decided to give it a go.  We were very pleasantly surprised at the nice campground with picnic tables they had setup outside of their shop and decided to camp there instead of heading to our fallback fallback plan, which was still an hour away.  Topping it off, the owner gave me a free meat pie since they were closing and were just going to throw them away.  We set up the tent and then cooked dinner.  We have a new semi default camping food, which is a pack of pre made Indian sauce (assorted flavors, depending on what’s on sale at the time) and adding in veggies, chicken, paneer, and/or beans.  

We woke after a good night’s sleep and then headed off to Kawhia, a sleepy beach town.  Like all towns in New Zealand, they take their coffee seriously, and it seemed like a third of the businesses were selling coffee as we drove through.  Our goal was to get to a hot water beach.  There are multiple beaches that are hot for some (geothermal) reason, and they are all called hot water beaches, which can get confusing since the term replies to multiple different spots. This is a lesser touristed beach, and we got there and could not find any hot water.  You need to go at low tide, and the step that we missed was bringing a shovel and seriously digging down to expose the hot water.  Even though we failed to find the hot water at the beach, we did discover one of the best seashell beaches that I had been to.  It is up there with Sanibel Island in my opinion.  We spent an hour or two moseying down the beach picking up assorted shells (which of course all had to go into my jacket pocket).

Our next day consisted of taking back roads along the coast to Raglan, which is known for its surfing scene after being featured in a popular NZ movie some years back.  It was a really nice drive, mainly on 1.5 lane dirt roads.  There was only one time when we were not sure if we were in a farmer’s field or on the actual public road.  We had a picnic lunch next to a waterfall and then continued on.  We had a couple more stops and ended up at our campground on a hill overlooking the town and ocean.  Unfortunately it started to rain, and we brought our settlers game into the tent.  We decided that the next night we should get an AirBnB to repack for Hawaii and let our stuff dry out.  We brought two tents to New Zealand, and with the amount of rain here we think that we might start bringing them both with us when we go camping, so they can dry fully between uses.  The day stayed pretty rainy, and so we toured the Hamilton Botanical Gardens, which were actually pretty impressive, even in the rain.  That night we went to a couple breweries before calling it a night.  

Auckland was then our next stop on our road trip.  We had a flight that left around midnight, so we figured that we would explore Auckland for a day.  Since we flew into Wellington and not Auckland we had missed our chance to see Auckland when we arrived in the country.  Auckland is a real city.  It feels like a real city.  You can tell that a quarter of the population lives there.  They even have multiple lane true highways that goes for more than five miles.  The highways even have a shoulder.  We found a cheap parking garage and explored the city for most of the day.  There is a lot to see and some good museums, but I would not make Auckland a large part of any dedicated trip to New Zealand.  We were able to snag some of the best oysters that I have ever had during happy hour for $1.40 USD each.  One thing that going to Auckland really cemented is that New Zealand is a really new country.  People have only been here for about 900 years, and Europeans have only settled here for roughly 200 years.  We ended our Auckland day by heading to the airport for our flight to Honolulu. 

Our third day in Istanbul denoted when we were down to only one week of honeymoon left. We went down to breakfast, and they remembered our breakfast drink order, one coffee with cream and one Turkish tea, and brought it without asking. Our first stop of the day was to take the metro to the Hagia Sofia.

We tried to get there when they opened and were able to see a lot of the palace before the tour groups showed up. When we left a line (in the bright, unsheltered sun) had formed to get tickets. Did I mention that Istanbul is hot?

We then headed to the basilica cisterns, which consist of a large subterranean room with a bunch of Roman columns holding it up. It fell out of favor a bit ago when people decided they wanted running water instead of drawing their water from a pit.

We then decided to wander over to the bazaar. There is a large covered grand bazaar and a much smaller covered spice bazaar, but in my opinion the outside streets around the bazaar are the more exciting part. At this point Katy decided she wanted a kumpir, which is basically a mashed potato with a ton of fixings for lunch. The issue is that they are not the most common food item in this section of town. We spent a solid two plus hours while wandering around the bazaar looking for a kumpir.  We finally backtracked to near our hotel where we had previously seen them for sale to find her lunch treasure (Katy says: absolutely worth all the sweat and toil).

Carts that workers use to carry peoples purchases through the bazaar

We then wandered the rest of the way to our hotel and went to the pool for the rest of the late afternoon. We then walked down to the road along the Bosphorus and north along the shore looking for a place to eat dinner. We walked over a mile to the north, which took us away from a lot of the western tourists. We picked a fish restaurant overlooking the straight. Katy decided to be a little adventurous and ordered a Raki to drink. Raki is an anise flavored beverage that you add water and ice to in the right combination, and it makes it cloudy. I really liked it and Katy liked it more than she thought that she would.

We then tried to order a taxi on Turkeys taxi app and failed. There was a ton of non moving traffic, and the fare was suppose to be $3, but there were not enough drivers to satisfy demand. We tried to take a taxi from the street, but they wanted $10, too much. Katy then opened up google maps, and within 2 minutes we hopped on a bus that was jammed pack and took that most of the way back to the Ritz (Katy: turns out there was a soccer game at the municipal stadium, which was next to the hotel; we could hear the crowd cheering from the lounge).

Our last full day in Turkey we had one place on the agenda, Topkapi Palace. We tried to time it when there wouldn’t be hoards of tourists, but there were still hoards of tourists. It was a a rather large palace complex (Katy: it was massive and beautiful, despite being so hot; and I at least had no idea that the Ottoman Empire lasted well into the 20th century, so it was very interesting to learn about the history). I would say the Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sophia were my two favorite landmark tourist attractions in Istanbul.

We then headed back to the markets and ultimately back home. One large difference between the bazaar in Istanbul versus Bishkek is that a lot more of the bazaars are geared towards tourists, and there are a lot more touts bothering you. There are still (significantly) less touts than Morocco. It is justifiable that the bazaar is more tourist oriented because there are exponentially more tourists in Istanbul than Bishkek. Istanbul is definitely more expensive than Mongolia, but a lot of the cheap souvenir trinkets were still cheap. A lifesaver on dealing with the heat was that a bottle of water cost the same amount as using the public toilet, $0.20. I kept at least one one lira ($0.20) coin in my pocket at all times, so I could have a bathroom break or water on demand. As much as I am not a fan of paying for toilets, when they cost less than a quarter I am less irritated, especially when they are clean.

We wandered back to our hotel, and I went to the pool for the rest of the day, while Katy went and had a hamman treatment, which is basically a combo bath/massage (Katy: and was amazing!!!😍😍😍). We then went out and had our best meal of the trip at a sea food restaurant that was enough off the main drag that we didn’t hear any other patrons speaking English. Katy got a whole sea bass, and I got the anglerfish (Katy: google it, it’s one of those deep sea monsters), which is a type fish that I am not sure if I have ever seen on the menu before, and both were really good.

Katy at the late night dessert bar

Turkish Airlines had changed the time of our flight to Croatia to a couple hours later a few months ago, and I wasn’t able to find open seats on the earlier flights, so we ended up with almost another full day in Istanbul.

We spent the next morning visiting the bazaar trying to snag the last few trinkets of our trip. It worked out that in the last 50 yards of our trinket hunting, we discovered multiple stores that had the stuff we were looking for cheap. While we were walking through, we passed several news agencies filming in front of banks and currency exchange offices and didn’t think anything of them. We then discovered later that day that they were filming because of the sudden drop in the Turkish Lira. We didn’t really get to take advantage of the stronger dollar conversion for the lira, except for the hotel. They charged us the exchange rate based on the day we checked in and the credit card paid the transaction when we checked out so we got the exchange rate of when we checked out, which resulted in it being 25% cheaper than we anticipate for a total of $501 (Katy: including my hammam and all the booze at the pool). We then took a taxi to the airport, and he took the long way, which cost us an additional $4, but it irritated me so I gave the driver a piece of my mind when we got to the airport. We spent most of the afternoon at the hotel getting a 4pm checkout, so we had minimal time in the Turkish lounge, and it turned out to be Katy’s favorite one of the trip (Katy: but I did squeeze in one last dip in the pool as a result of the late checkout, so I don’t know that I entirely regret that choice…).

Turkey was a great country, and Istanbul seemed like a truly European city with all types of people in all types of dress co-mingling.

We had an early flight, 630am, from Bishkek to Istanbul so we called up our Yandex.Taxi app, and a driver was at our door within 10 minutes. The Bishkek airport was hopping this early in the morning, and it was a mess. They aren’t super great with lines in Kyrgyzstan, which I am fine with, but Katy is not a fan. We made it though immigrants and customs without being pulled aside and having to pay a bribe—not common, but of all the countries we went to on the trip, this was the most likely to have it happen. When we were talking to one of the locals on the hike he mentioned that there is a lot of buerocracy like Russia, but it is much more manageable because you just pay a small bribe, and the issue goes away. 

The white tastes like a grape flavored Smirnoff ice and is drinkable if you don’t think you are drinking wine. The red, this photo is the closest you should get to.

We went to the lounge, which had beer and wine (think of it as a late night, not an early morning) and some food stuffs. It was actually a lot better than the Ulaanbaatar lounge. We then had an uneventful 5.5 hour flight to Istanbul and were at our hotel by 10am. The immigration officer did want to confirm that I was really a business class passenger and just not bypassing the line (we may have been a little scruffy looking at this point). 

We had booked a room at the Ritz during the period when the US and Turkey had stopped issuing tourist visas for one another (~February), and prices had declined to €123/night, and we were able to use one of our credit card upgrade certificates, which gave us a club room (breakfast in the restaurant, and in the club lounge four food services daily, and alcohol for free) which aren’t available with status. That made it pretty affordable at a place we normally wouldn’t stay, but we are on our honeymoon (rooms are now €200-300/night). When we got there they whisked us up to the 12th floor, so we could check in there, instead of the lobby (club guests don’t normally fraternize in the lobby, apparently). I don’t really understand it, but they were able to get us a corner room with a very partial Bosporus view at 10am so I can’t complain. The club lounge host then took a map and went over the city with us over some Turkish coffee and Turkish delight. 

Istanbul is hot and humid. It is definitely the warmest place we have been since Tokyo over a month ago (Katy says: it’s the warmest place since Sri Lanka). At least the universal price of a bottle of water is 1 lira which was $0.20 (when we got to Turkey the conversion was $1 to 5.1 lira, our last day that changed), and they were easy to buy. We spent the afternoon walking around our portion of Istanbul. We then crossed the bridge to the older section of town and decided to do a Bosphorus boat ride ($3) since it was leaving very soon. 

We then went back and freshened up while looking at the pool but decided to abstain (for now) since the hungers were upon us. We had a loose plan and ended up walking around for about 20 minutes before we came to a kebab place. Traveling with Katy, I tend to eat less meat and go to less places that specialize in meats than if I was traveling with meat eaters, but a few times per trip we can go to a place that focuses on the meats (Katy: I had a lovely veggie kebab). We then wandered home. 

We had 3 full days and planned to checkout of the hotel at 4pm on our last day in Istanbul. That said, there is something nice about staying in a fancy hotel with outdoor mini pools that overlook the Bosporus. Our strategy was to sight see for the first portion of the day and after lunch wander back to the hotel. Istanbul is hot. We decided to do pants (Katy: and intermittent, stifling head scarf) this day and knock out all the mosques that required conservative clothing and the following days have a little more freedom in our dress. Kyrgyzstan is a Muslim country, but we only saw a handful of women in hijab during our time there. Istanbul is much more diverse, with many Muslim women (both local and foreign), wearing everything from black abaya to hijab with western clothes, to women in sundresses or shorts—and not uncommonly, women in both forms of dress a together in groups.

We went to the Blue Mosque, which was under construction, so you could not see a lot of the ceiling (widely considers the highlight), which left a lackluster impression on us. Instead of going to the Hagia Sofia, which is right across the plaza, we decided to amble to the Süleymaniye Mosque because the Hagia Sofia entry line was too long to bake under the sun. During our amble, Katy discovered some lavender soap that it was essential she purchase, since our soap had been consumed over the past month (please note she did not feel a need to use it at the Ritz, just stockpile it for potential future needs—Katy further notes it cost 5 lira, i.e. less than $1, and smells delightful, and probably had contact with an actual lavender plant at some point). We then took the tram back home. It cost $0.50, and the terminal station was just down the hill from the hotel. We then reapplied sunscreen (at this point we have five types of sunscreen that are being used for different purposes, but our sunburn levels have been minimal) and went down to the pool. I got a beer, and Katy got a gin and tonic. The G&T was served in a chilled pint glass with ice and filled 3/4 of the way, with an 8 ounce bottle of tonic on the side, still nearly full. It turns out that the cup was just full of gin, and they supplied less tonic then gin. Needless to say Katy was a little tipsy after her cup-o-gin and sidecar of tonic. It was then dinner time, so we wandered about 20 minutes away to a smaller place that had some Istanbul craft beer in bottles. We then prepared for bed, to try to beat the lines the next morning. 

I am breaking this post into two parts. The first are things I learned about Mongolia from talking to people that I found interesting and couldn’t fit into other posts. The second part are my thoughts on the country in general.

Mongolia is a very different country than others that I have visited. Since half of the population lives in one city that is where most of the infrastructure spending goes. The number of paved roads outside of medium-to-large sized towns is minimal, and they mainly connect cities in the center of the country.

Ulaanbaatar was designed for 500,000 people, but about 2 million people live there now. Since many of the people that live there were formerly nomads they just took their gers and placed them at the edge of the city. Most of the people that live in gers use coal (sometimes plastic bottle waste) for fuel for their stoves. This coupled with Ulaanbaatar being the coldest (or second coldest) capital city in the world has led to air pollution in the city that is worse than Beijing, something you would not expect for being one of the lease population dense countries in the world.

Main very Soviet era looking plaza at night.

Yes, Ulaanbaatar does have a Beatles Square

The previous administration tried to address the sprawl of Ulaanbaatar by offering subsidized loans on apartments in the city at 8% interest. The current administration has taken away the subsidies for new loans, so our guide has a mortgage on his condo at an 18% interest rate ($300 per month payment). The government is trying to entice people to move back to the country. They have initiated a voucher program where if you live in Ulaanbaatar you get a voucher for 0.7 acres of land for free as long as it isn’t in Ulaanbaatar (with a few other stipulations).

The number of people in Ulaanbaatar has led to the city being a traffic nightmare. It takes 30 minutes to get the airport without traffic, but the one time we went in the middle of the day it took over 60 minutes with most of that additional time being spent traveling less than two miles. They do have a public bus system, which is jammed full during rush hour, and according to TK, during the winter when everyone is bundled up, he has literally been lifted off his feet by a wave of people leaving the bus and forcibly “taken” off the bus before his stop.

Nice sidewalks, but everything needed a little maintenance.

The average wage in Mongolia is low. In Ulgii the salary for a teacher was about $160 per month (our guide was a teacher the rest of the year). In Ulaanbaatar it is about $300 for teaching English at a public school and about double that for teaching at a private school. When Mongolia became “independent” the literacy rate was very low, less than 10% of the population. While part of the USSR the literacy rate increased substantially, and today it is in the high 90%s. Mongolia now scores 92 on the human development index, which is a statistic reported by the UN that stratifies countries into different tiers of development, and a score greater than 80 denotes a high level of human development. Now it is not required to send your children to school, but most people do, even in remote areas. This is done through a combination of boarding schools and the fact that in the winter families move to their winter house for ~7 months, usually in a village with a school.

The universities in Mongolia are in Ulaanbaatar, and many families send their kids to Ulaanbaatar for education, but many never leave. This has translated to Ulaanbaatar being a very young city. Despite all of this prices in the city are very cheap. We ate lunch at a noodle shop, and it was $3 for two entrees and a soda. A beer at many establishments cost $1. Despite the low food prices there is a emphasis on food safety. We did not have GI issues the entire time that we were in Mongolia, which I found very surprising. At the cheap noodle place I repeatedly saw them wiping counters (not sure if the rag they were using was clean, but there was an effort).

Mongolia is not the most vegetarian friendly place we have been. Faced with Katy’s dietary restrictions, most places offered her every carrot in a 5 kilometer radius, but little else. On a plus side, she can now see a mile through her eyelids, and the orange hue to her skin will likely fade eventually… (really, that many carrots)

They really wanted to be hipster, but they missed the mark. That said the place was always jammed with Mongolians.

We got lunch for $3 total from this place.

There for some reason there is an infatuation with Korean beauty products (which Katy shares), and most things are 50% cheaper than US/Korean prices. Like in the US, most people have a smartphone. In general things are really cheap in Mongolia. Spending more than $4 in a typical restaurant is difficult. Even in fancy restaurants the $8-10 plates are meant for two people. That being said Mongolian food is not a culinary delight. They use minimal amounts of spice, and most of the meat is boiled. They don’t differentiate fat from meat, so a lot of dishes with meat are pretty fatty. When we got back to Ulaanbaatar our dinner stop was Indian food, and boy was it good and spicy. Most Mongolians when they go out to dinner don’t eat Mongolian food, and Korean is the current food fad. One thing they do well are noodles. Most places that we got noodles they were homemade wheat based chewy noodles that were really good.

One true microbrewery in town. They were out of all their beers except the pale ale. It was drinkable, but the first time I tasted hops in over a month so I wasn’t picky

Overall Ulaanbaatar was a surprise. It is a city that is trying in many aspects. After not having a real bed in about four weeks coming back to a real bed and laundry machine was pretty amazing. Katy and I both had an amazing time in Mongolia. We feel that we saw a lot of the country (even though we missed giant parts), and we might come back in the future if there is a compelling reason, but it isn’t at the top of our return list. I am glad that we split our trip up into two parts and were not with one tour company for the entire time. It allowed us to fly between segments, which saved over 40 hours of driving with our itinerary and gave us two different but equally good guides with very different perspectives to share.

The steps to the fourth floor of our AirBnB, very Soviet era looking. Inside the apartment was really nice.

Outside of the opera house. We went to a cultural show which was surprisingly good, but didn’t have enough cash so I had to run and find an atm before it started. Found this on the way.

The State Department Store was located next to our AirBnB

Katy watching here prayer wheel go around. Most of the Buddhist temples and monasteries were destroyed during communist purges.

We ended up at a Korean BBQ place one day for lunch

Downtown Ulaanbaatar

We spent most of the day driving to lake Khovsgul. Khovsgul is a rather large lake which contains about 2% of the earths fresh water. We had three nights at the lake before we drove to Moron and flew back to Ulaanbaatar.

Herders in the road. I swear the car rocked a couple times as the cows bumped into it.

Reinforced power poles, this area gets a lot of wind in the winter, I am just happy that it reduces the chance of summer power outages

Katy and I ended up switching beds since she didn’t like getting out of bed when it was cold to add more wood to the fire

Our snack stash. Half of it was ruined by evil squirrels that get into the gers. Ended up storing the survivors in the stove when not in use. Katy was so mad the snacks got eaten she was ready to make squirrel pot pie.

Safety first on our boat ride

We stayed on the lake three days. Our guide said that he had never in five years stayed in the same place for three nights. I think normally people spend a long time driving each day.

We bought some alcohol distilled from yak milk at the yak festival. It is about 25% alcohol and tastes of slightly sour milk. It cost $1.20. We did not finish it.

We splurged for some wine one night in the camp.

We walked to a sandy beach one morning that we found when we went to the reindeer herders teepee.