In Sep 2017 my friend offered me to join Inner Mongolia tour using charter flight, the difficult part was to get the correct pas photo for getting China visa, so many pre-condition, the pas photo size was not in normal size using cm, but even till mm. It's the first time difficult experience although I have applied visa for many other countries including China. Our travel agent rejected all my pas photos although it's passed for other embassy, finally I took at the photo studio that had been used by my colleague to get China visa recently. Finally my visa had been approved about 3 days before the departure, the departure city was Jakarta, while I lived in Surabaya, an hour flight from Jakarta. One of the destination place I like in Mongol, was the Ordos Grassland.
By bus from the previous city, we passed infinite grassland scenery, we could see a herd of horses or sheeps grazing, even some camels. Part of The Great Wall could be seen on the way to the destination. Our bus stopped at the tourist center building, there was a beautiful carriage in front of the building where we could sit on the red bench in the white carriage to take picture. A "Prairie Resort of Ordos" monument with wolves available at the central, unfortunately it's quite difficult to take picture as it's against the sun shine.
We welcome by Mongolian ladies wearing traditional clothes and put a blue scarf on us accompany with traditional live music. There's a corner decorated with Mongolian accessories, my friend and I waited for a turn to take picture there. In the building available a souvenir shop, most of us directly went there to find Mongolia souvenirs. Lucky I could got a bronze candle holder with standing horse which I would like to buy in the previous place, but it was finished, no much time to find other souvenirs, our tour leader asked us to go faster to the bus that had waited at the back of the building to pick us up to drive to the hotel.
We would stay in the unique Mongolian yurt. I thought it's the real yurt, in fact it's a normal 2 stairs hotel, but they build as if side by side yurt. It's beautiful, I like the design with white wall, white dome and blue ornaments. As there were many visitors, we had to wait for a long time at the lobby, waiting for the room key. Boring waiting, I walked outside to take pictures, but I had to be careful not stepping on the horse's shit :-) As soon as we'd got the key, we rushed to the room to take a rest after a long hour bus driving. Stunning going inside the room, I felt like inside a yurt, my eyes stared to a large half circle bed which could be used for 4-5 persons, but it would be only used for 2 of us. The decoration was nice, the bed was surrounded by woods, wide windows available for enjoying the scenery. As the weather was quite mild, we didn't turn on the air conditioning, just open the windows to enjoy the fresh air. My friend and I chatted, charged our mobile phone while resting on the bed waiting for the dinner time.
We would attend gala dinner, it supposed to be for ceremony/celebration with the king. Before enjoy the Mongolian ethnic culture, they would lend us traditional clothes to wear during gala dinner. We would be treated as the king's guest, so we have to dress up properly. There were around 150 tour participants, so you could imagine the chaos to take the clothes as nobody guarded the clothes and taught us how to wear them. No reservation for the clothes size either, if the clothes were too small, people would try to get the change, so people rushed to take the best costumes, the earlier was the lucky person as they could have more option. The costumes were worn on top of our own clothes, so we could change anywhere in the restaurant area, no need to be inside of bathroom or changing room.
We came on time, but others already came much earlier, we're not lucky enough to get the costumes we wanted. My friend grabbed the available clothes in the room, succeeded to get me a red dress while she chose the golden one. Unfortunately my dress was too small for me, I could not close the right side button. As there were no more option for another bigger costume available, I tried to hide it by holding the right side when taking picture. The restaurant decoration was quite luxurious, full of red and golden colour, many places could become a good background of our photo wearing the Mongolian costume such as beautiful bronze sculpture painting, golden pillar, also royal seat which had to be queued.
Reaching the dinner time, we were asked to enter the restaurant room which was more amazing. It's arranged like a circle with different height for the guest seat, so whoever sitting behind was still able to see the middle area under the beautiful chandelier. Various meals were provided on the table for each person with a coke tin for drink :-). Opposite the entrance was the king throne, accompanying by 2 queens at his right and left side. They chose one man as the king and 2 women as the queen from the guests.
The celebration was started when some people entering the room behind a messenger, they went towards the king, reading the message that I could not understand as I can't speak Chinese. Then some dancing were performed for all of us, the king and the guests. While enjoying the entertainments, guests always served one by one with more and more food by the waitress and waiter in traditional costume. Most of the food was traditional which was served during the ancient days for the king, mostly made from lamb, it's not too suitable with my appetite. Finally the dancer brought a the main special menu, a whole grill lamb, to the middle of the room as one of the attraction, I heard they provided 4 grill lambs for all of us. Each of us got a full portion of small plate, first I only wanted to try a small bit, as I don't like lamb. When I tasted it a little bit, it's delicious and not lamb smell at all. I like it, it's very crispy, finally I finished the remaining portion for me.
The dinner was finished around 1.5 hours, we didn't forget to take group picture to record our experience with Mongolian party costumes before returning the costume. Another event had waited for us at the bonfire building. Outside the weather became very cold, my jacket could not help a lot to warm my body. I almost run to avoid the cold and getting faster to the place. As my friend jacket was thinner, she almost gave up with the cold, and planned to go back to the room first. Finally she agreed to join us to the bornfire place, she ran fast and reached the place before us. On the way we saw some Mongolians riding horse with their costumes brought archers or swords.
Entering the building was warmer, but we had to go to the open air bonfire area looked like a stadium, we sat closely to each other to make us warmer. The attraction opened with the horse parade with soldier on top of it. They started lit on the fire in the middle of the area, 2 master ceremony opened the event using Chinese, unfortunately I didn't understand what they said as I could not speak Chinese. It's continued with other performance such as singing and dancing by local people, till made fun with some guests for running race on the sand while carrying a woman, the winner who had struggled and tumbled many times finally got souvenirs from them. It's quite fun to close our day. The place was far away from the light pollution, we had a chance to see the shining stars at the night sky. Inner Mongolia has extreme weather. The difference in temperature between day and night was quite dramatic.
After early breakfast that I skipped, we had to bring our luggage to the bus. My roommate friend preferred to stay in the lobby while waiting for the departure time as she needed the free wifi in the lobby to check her email. I went first to the bus to put my bagpack, I saw the scenery was beautiful with some yurts, I took picture with my friends. We tried to jump while our friend took the picture, unfortunately it kept failing as he hadn't configured properly. We saw my roommate friend went out from the lobby, we shouted to ask her hurry to take picture together. She ran, unfortunately she tripped and stumbled down on the asphalt made her knee's hurt and her jeans torn. All of us were very shocked then ran to help her, after reaching her we could not stop laughing, when describing what's just happened. Poor my roommate friend, she didn't focus on the road, rushing to join us for taking picture while all of us encouraged her to come as fast as possible. Lucky it was the last day of the trip, as she was difficult to walk after that, it hurt when she bent the knee. Fortunate that her knee was not broken, so she still could walk by herself.
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