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144 Ramble On · bit of a Rambler

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello. Oh. My name is Kai, and I am a
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: bit of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: tell stories. And today we'll ramble on last week in Mongolia.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mongolia has been great, but I just realized, after talking
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to so many people about their nomadic relatives and the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: public transportations, a city of nomads and all this, that
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: it has been too long and I have to start
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: backpacking again. I really miss walking around a city and
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: finding things that I wouldn't normally find, and then spotting
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: a couple of trees next to a stream or something
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and putting up my hammock and passing out. So I
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: wanted to get a hammock, and I figured in a
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: city of nomads a hammock wouldn't be too difficult to find.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: But it was is the short version of that story,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: because Mongolian nomads and campers use either irtz or tents,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: and I just wanted to find a hammock. There were
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Decathlon stores in the city in ulan Batar, but I
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: figured I would try the local ones first because I
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: was like, who knows what kind of hammocks Mongolians have
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and the answer is basically none, almost none. I started
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: by going to camping and outdoor stores, and I visited
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: a bunch of them, and every single one looked really
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: confused when I showed them a hammock, as if they
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: had never seen one before, and I hadn't seen one
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: in the city. Certainly, I hadn't seen any camping in
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the city at all. And I think the thing with
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: that is if they're I'm in ulan Batar. So there's
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: three million people in Mongolia, half of them live in
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: ulan Batar, and ulan Batar is enormous. It's a huge country,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: or Mongolia is a huge country. So if you're not
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: in ulan Batar, you read out very sparsely across the
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: whole rest of the country, and there are towns and villages,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: but they're nothing. There's only one main city in ulan Batar.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: There's not like a New York in a Chicago and
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a Boston. There is ulan Batar and then a bunch
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: of towns across a vast country. There are also a
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: ton of lakes and rivers, which I hadn't realized until
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I saw the map in my roommate's apartment. But anyway,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: so if you're going to be a nomad, you leave
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the city because the city is for young people to
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: find a job, well, really for everyone to find a job.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: If you want to work, you go into that city
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and find a job. But if you don't need to work,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: or you don't want to, you go nomad. And you
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: can go be a nomad with your family in one
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: of the small towns and make a much more modest
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: living and live very cheaply. And Ulambatar is also very
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: inexpensive to live in relative to other countries. But I
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: can't even imagine how cheap the towns outside ulan Batar
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: must be. It must be free. You can probably just
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: move into a house in one of the towns, an
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: abandoned house. I don't ah. Yeah, So I really wanted
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: to get out there, and I was in my last week,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and I knew I would have to make a remake
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: all of my camping gear because I didn't have any
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: on me anymore. I got rid of it a year
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: or two ago when I decided to start the podcast,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: because I knew I would have to be inside a lot.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't really know how well I could set up
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: these indoor studios so that the podcast would sound okay
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: enough to talk into it. Was a lot easier than
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I thought. And now that I've caught up and kind
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of know what's going on, I've been living in apartments
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: now for over a year straight, which is maybe the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: longest I've ever done that without backpacking. Even though I
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: visited Japan, I still got a house in Japan for
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: what's six weeks or something. That's wild for me. That
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: was the first time I didn't backpack in Japan. So
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: once I was in Mongolia and I have been thinking
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: about getting back into backpacking again. Now that I have
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the audio recording thing down and I understand it well enough,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I can just backpack and then if I need to record,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I can rent place for a week and keep backpacking
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and I won't get the monthly discounts that I usually
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: do on Airbnb. But if I'm backpacking half of the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: time anyway, I will get those discounts d facto. If
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: it's whatever, let's say five hundred a month for an
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: expensive apartment abroad, but it comes out to like eight
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: hundred per month if I rent it weekly. If I
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: only rent three weeks, I'm still only paying six hundred
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: a month because for one week I'm living for free
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: outside backpacking. If I do two, then I'm paying four hundred.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And so if I do one week in an apartment,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: one week out, one week in, one week out, I
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: only pay four hundred. So it's even less than my
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: monthly payment. And I get to be out backpacking like
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I love to do. I love to sleep in a hammock.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I love to be under the trees, shaded by the trees.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: It's great. So I decided to go look for a hammock,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and I went to all the camping stores first. No,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: you know what, that's not true. I went to the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Kathalons first. There were two d Kathlons in ulan Batar,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: not a lot, but again it's a huge country. There's
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: only three million people. There's only one city. So having
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: two d Kathlons to choose from, I was like, all right,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: that's good. If the first one doesn't have the hammock
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: that I love, the second one will. So it also
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: took a while to track down because the well whatever,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: the markets were difficult. I went to the first d Kathlon.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I did find it. On the fifth, tucked someone in
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the corner and I went in and I found the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: hammock that I loved the exact one. It looked exactly
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: like the one I had bought before that. I was
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: such a big fan of it's very lightweight material, extremely
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: thin maybe a millimeter, but very strong. The one I
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: had lasted for a decade, no problem, and I was
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: very psyched. I still have the old one. It was
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: in how Whitey. I think I left that with a
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: friend who wanted to use it, but they said I
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: could pick it up from them if I decided to
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: start traveling again. But I was in Mongoli and I
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: wanted a hammock stat so I went around and yeah,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: this first Ykathalon had what looked like the exact same hammock,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and I was pretty psyched. So I asked the guy
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: how much it was, and it was a great price.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I can't remember, but it was even cheaper than the
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: decathlon retail price, which is very common if you you
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: can have the exact same product in different countries and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: it'll be cheaper in lower co of living countries, and
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Mongoli is a quite low cost of living country, so
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I shaved a few bucks off. Maybe it was like
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: fifteen bucks instead of nineteen. It was something like that,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: but I was so excited to find the If it
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: was thirty, I probably still would have got that hammock.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: The decathlon one person hammock and two person hammocks are
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: so good. The only problem they have was the weight
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: limit of them. I think it's you know, that's a
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: ten fifteen year old design versus new lightweight hammocks, so
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: they just don't have the same fabric strength, I think.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: But I think it was still one hundred and ten kilograms.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I thought it was much lower than that. I thought
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: it was like eighty kilograms, and I didn't know if
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I could get in there with my rucksack. Anyway, the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: weight limit was okay. It's printed right on the side
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: of the hammock. So I was like, this is so perfect.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And I went to the guy and I was like, oh,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: hang on a second, I'm just gonna check real quick.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I would just check. I check everything, and even though
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: this had the exact same logo and had the same
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: brand name and all that kind of stuff, I figured
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I would just open it up and check it real quick.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: So I opened the hammock and it's inside attached stuff
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: sack that was the color of my old Decathalon hammock
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that I love so much. I open this up and
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: it is kaleidoscopic neon yellow, neon pink, and neon orange
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and white yellow, pink, orange and white triangles like neon triangles.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I was stunned, honestly, I was staring at this pattern,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: this crazy insane disco pattern on what used to be
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: a very sedate blue green hammock. That's perfect for camping,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: and especially urban camping, because it's out of the way.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: You're not really distracting people. It's not like it's in
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: But if you're a few things back in the trees,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: nobody's gonna really notice you. And if they do notice you,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you're not interrupting the landscape. You're a green hammock, blue
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: green hammock among like blue green leaves and trees. It
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: just is very my style. It's unobtrusive, which is great
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: in Japan and everywhere else. You want to stealth camp.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I want to stealth camp. And I debated it because
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: it felt like the same material. It felt very strong,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: but the colors in this specific circumstance, which I like
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: bright colors. I give me a purple, a cool like purple,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: shiny anything, and I'm pretty excited. I'm okay with bright colors.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: In general, I think it's nice. I think expressing yourself
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: is fun. I dyed my hair purple ones, which I
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: keep talking about doing again, and I still haven't done it.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: And now I'm getting so old I'm gonna lose my
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: hair and then I can't dyet. So I have to
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: dye my hair soon before I don't have any hair
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: to die. But this hammock, I was physically stunned. I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: couldn't believe the design. They had changed a monochrome blue
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: and green hammock too, like kaleidoscope is the best adjective
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I have for it. It was a kaleidoscopic shards of
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: glass mish mash of yellow, pink, orange, and white neon
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: colors that made up the body of the hammock. So
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: it would have been two and a half plus meters
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of this crazy color. So even if you were half
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: a kilometer away, if I was buried in the forest
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: off of a road, anyone walking down the road would
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: be like, what is that thing? And they'd probably come
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: to investigate. It was just too loud for me. I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: don't mind if people see my hammock while I'm urban camping.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I almost think it's rude of me to have a
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: hammock that loud, because it would interrupt the flow of
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the trees and the rivers I was next to while
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I was camping. It just seemed crazy. It was too crazy.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: So I was like, hey, I'm sorry, do you have
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: any of these that are just this outside color of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the stuff sack and not this crazy color? And he
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: was like, no, that's the only one. So I said
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: thank you and put it back together and put it
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: back on the shelf and said, dang well, I'll just
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: get it from the other the other decathlon. So I
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: went to the second caathalon, which was on the other
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: side of the city. But you know, I don't have
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: anything to do. I love walking around, so I just
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: walked to the other side of the city and found
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the decathlon and it was a little bit bigger. So
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: that was that booyed me a bit. I figured there'd
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: be more choice, and the hammocks are in like every
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: decathlon store, so I went in and asked someone and
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: this was pretty rare. In Ulan Batar. There are a
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: lot of foreigners in that country, tons of people from
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Russia and China. Tons of foreigners in ulan Batar in general.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So but just I believe I've mentioned this before with China. Sometimes,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: even though I can speak Mandarin quite well, I will
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: talk to someone and they'll just be so shocked to
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: see a foreigner at all that they won't register the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: words that I'm saying to them. And that happened in
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: this Decathalon store in Mongolia, and it was pretty much
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: the only time it happened. But maybe that person's from
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: a town, a suburb, because this was kind of on
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the edge of town. Maybe she comes into the city
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: for work because outside of the city there are not
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of foreigners. They're all in the city. So
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: she spoke in English back to me, but she looked
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: very flustered, and I said, just a hammock, like the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: decathlon hammock, and I showed her picture and she's like ah,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: and she called out something in Mongolian, and another person
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: came over and spoken perfect English, and she asked what
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: I was looking for, and I told her to the hammock,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and she said, oh, we just sold out, so and
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: it was the one I had it out of its
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: stuff sack, so the color, so it was the one
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I was looking for. But apparently they just sold the
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: last one. And because it is Mongolia, which is super
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: close to China, but there's only three million people there
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: in the whole country, I guess they just don't restock
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: these decathlon stores and the decathlon stores. These are the
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: smallest decathlon stores I have ever seen. There may be
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: you know, I still don't understand square meters. Is it
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: just the first floor square meters. If it is, there
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: may be ten by twenty, so there may be two
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: hundred square meters maximum. But decathlon stores are usually like
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: thousands of square meters. They're huge. They're huge stores. So
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: even this big one was only a couple of rooms
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: like ten by ten square meters and then ten by
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: ten square meters and connected, separated by a wall, but
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: connected by a tiny walkway. But the wall was umples.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: They could have taken out that wall, That's what I'm saying.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know why that wall was there. But they
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: didn't have the hammock. So I said it's okay, thank you,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: And then I was like, dang it, I really want
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: a hammock. And once I get my teeth sunk into something,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I focus on that, and hammock especially it's just something
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I love to do. I love to sleep in a hammock,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and I like the feeling, especially if decathlon hammocks, because
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: when I'm in, I can it wraps around like a
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: cocoon and wind can get through the decaptha on hammock
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: that I love so much. The wind goes through, but
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the heat of the sun kind of warms up the
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the outer the hammock itself, so when I'm in the hammock,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I'm warm from the sun, like on my arms that
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: are touching the sides of the hammock fabric. But wind
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: is going through, so I'm constantly being blown by a
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: cool wind. In every country it works that way everywhere.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: That hammock is like magical. I don't know, maybe I've
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: got three of those throughout my life. At one point
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: or another, I either gave it to someone else or
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: it finally got old or whatever, but I probably had three,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: and now I just had this one I left behind
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: in Hawaii a while ago, but no dice. Both decathlons
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: in Mongolia had no hammock, So now I was like, boy,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: that's that has been. I got the first decathlon hammock
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, so that's my go to for the
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: perfect hammock. Now I needed to figure out where the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: heck do I get a hammock if I don't have
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the option of getting it from decathlon. Because I was
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: also going to go to Jeju, South Korea next and
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to backpack there because Busan was
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: so beautiful and there was so much nature there. I
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: figured Jedu Island, which is going to have a more tropical,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: more island vibe, basically, would have just as many trees
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: or more, and there would be even more places for
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: me to set up my hammock and hammock camp around
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the island, which I love doing. The only thing I
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: didn't have was rain gear in case it rained, but
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I didn't even have my hammock yet, so I wasn't
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: worrying too much about the rain gear. Had to get
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: a hammock first, so I looked. I looked for sports
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: equipment stores and I found a few, and I went
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to a few, but they all just had shoes. So
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: after I went to like three or four of those,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I stopped and thought for a second again, I was like, oh,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: camping stores, of course, Like look for camping stores. They're
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: more likely to have what you're looking for. So I
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: looked for camping stores next, and there were seven explicitly
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: camping stores, and then there was like fifty things that
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: called themselves camping stores. But it looked like they just
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: had shoes and maybe a couple jackets. And I went
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: to around to a few of those camping stores to
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: make sure, but they did. They just had shoes and jackets,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: like premium, like name brand quote hiking unquote like north Face,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: just shoes and jackets. Basically, they didn't have a lot
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: of camping equipment. There weren't like hiking poles or hammocks
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: or cots or whatever you would get from a camping
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: equipment store, lanterns and all that kind of stuff. So
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: I said, ah, this is weird because this is the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: nomad country. But they must have different markets and they
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: have different They definitely have tens I went to. So
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I started going to the camping stores that I knew
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: were only camping equipment, Like, they had stuff I could
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: see in the pictures online that were like a lantern, oh,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: like a metal stove something like that. I was like, Okay,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: they have some kind of camping equipment and ropes, So
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I went to the first one, and they did have
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: some camping equipment, but it really was just like some
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: ropes and yeah, let's say a cooking stove, and then
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: the rest was jackets and shoes. And I went to
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: a second one and it was a similar thing. They
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: had a couple things, but not no hammocks. And then
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I went to the third and it was enormous and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: it looked like a Mongolian decathalon. It looked like they
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: had tons of different stuff, but not corporate. It was
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: just kind of laid out nicely and a couple of
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: tents were set up and I saw the tents and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: those were the first tents I had seen in Mongolia
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: in a store. So I got really excited and I
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: asked the guy, Hey, do you have hammocks? And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: and he took me over and he said this, and
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: it's a hammock chair. So it's just a chair with
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: like four ropes attached to it to a wooden frame.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, okay, thank you. You don't have
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: one to like sleep in. He's like, no, no, no,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: no sleeping hammocks. And I was sort of incredulous because
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: this thing was huge. This thing was bigger than both
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: of those other decathlon Both two decathlon stores combined were
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: maybe half the size of the Sky's store. And he
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: had everything. He had headlamps and kayaks. He had kayaks
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: and tents of all sizes. There was one tent that
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: was shaped like a yurt, but it was like a
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: modern tent, sleeping bags. He had everything, but he had
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: zero hammocks, just one hammock chair. So I figured hammocks
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: just weren't part of Mongolian culture. But I figured I'd
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: keep looking because there were four more stores, and I
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: kept looking, and I went to one cold there was
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: an archery store, and the archery stores just had really
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: cool handmade bows and arrows. So I started going into
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: those and asking people do you know where I can
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: get a hammock by the way, and just checking out
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: what they had, And in one place had one worker
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: who spoke really good English, and the other people I
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: just showed pictures too, and they were like, no, we
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: don't have that here. But this one girl told me,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: you know what you should do. You should go to
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the black market. And it's called the black market, but
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: it's not illegal. It's just like a big outdoor shopping
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: center where you pay for things often in cash, but
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: they do take a lot of cards there, which was
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: kind of surprising but modern life. And I went there
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: and she said they're open every day, but then I
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: went there and they were actually closed that day. I
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: think it was Monday or something, and they're always closed
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: on Mondays. So I did go to the black market,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and that thing is huge, huge, like this camping store was,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: you know, the size of two d cathalons. This black
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: market is probably about one kilometer by zero point seventy
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: five kilometers large. It's huge. You it'll take twenty minute
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: to walk across it, and if you're looking at stuff,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: it'll take hours. There's enormous stalls that just have ten
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: thousand belts, and next door to that guy is another
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: guy that just has ten thousand belts, and then there's
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: a billion. There's probably like twenty belt stalls. At least
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: it was. It was like one of the Chinese outdoor
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: markets if you've ever been there, and those can get
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: bigger man the big I just when I was in Guangdong,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: there's a huge one that was like two miles long.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: It was so crazy, but anyway, this outdoor market was enormous,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, there's gotta be a hammock
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: somewhere in here. So I walked around for a long time. First,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I just walked through the whole thing for a couple hours,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: quickly clocking like all the different sections, clothing, bicycles, like
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of bicycles, just everything, wagons, lawn chairs,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and then I was like getting to camping equipment, and
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I saw a tent being set up by a proprietor
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and I was like, hey, So I went over and
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: asked him, Hey, do you have a hammock? And he
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: didn't know what I was saying. So I showed him
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: a picture and he's like no, no, no, no no.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, okay, is there anyone else
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: with a hammock? No? No, And so I asked another
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: worker because I figured maybe he just didn't understand me.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: But the worker was like, oh, no, no hammocks. Sorry,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: we only have tents. And he tried to show me
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the tent and I was like no, no, thank you,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: it's okay. And then those two guys were the only
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: camping store in this entire kilometer square market. And I
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: was like, what is happening? And I walked around and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: I found a few other places, but they only had tents. Also,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the most I could find in terms of hammock camping
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: were mosquito nets, but they were They had rigid aluminum
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: wires in a two making a mesquite with mosquito net fabric,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: and they were like they weren't crazy expensive, but they
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: were like ten All of them were between eight to
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: eight dollars and up. And you can get a mosquito
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: net just the fabric in like any country in Asia
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: for a dollar. You can get a huge canopy mosquito
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: net for one to three dollars very easily, and it's
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: a different design like this was. I'd have to cut
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: out different sections and sew them together, and it just
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: wasn't the work wasn't worth the work that I would
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: have to put into it. I just I was like,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: there's got to be something. So I kept looking through
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: this market. I went back the next day. I asked
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: to every single camping guy again. I asked a few
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: other people who had camping adjacent items like folding chairs
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: or whatever, but no one in that entire black market.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: And there's a department building next to it, the one
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: five floors up, and people were telling me, oh, yeah,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: they have hamacs here, they have hamics here. No. Not.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: None of the floors and none of this kilometer square
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: market had a hammock or a non rigid bugnet. They
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: only had very small rigid bugnets that I guess you
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: would put. I don't even know what they're for because
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: it was a tube. Yeah, it was just a tube
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: with aluminum framing, like segmented into mosquito net. I don't know,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: it's really weird. I have no idea what you would
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: use that for. But after I couldn't find in the market,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I was like, man, I guess there's just there's just
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: not hammocks in this country. They's just not part of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the culture. And I hadn't seen one. Again. They are
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: a urt people and now tens, so maybe there are
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: tent people also if you're a newer camper. But I
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: just sort of shrugged, and then I went I went
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: back to maps and I just looked on I looked
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: at all the camping stores. I hadn't been to all
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: of those seven camping stores because after the third or
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: fourth one, then the girl said the black market and
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: it's so huge. I was like, oh, yeah, okay, if
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it's that big, they've got to have a hammock somewhere
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and I can just use that hammock, you know, until
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I find a decathlon again where I can get my
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: good hammock. But they didn't, so I was feeling pretty
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: dejected because they were They had the same confused look,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: like no one really recognized the hammock right away. They
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: had to study the picture. So the mosquito net I
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: was I understood because Mongolia is very dry. It's at
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: a high elevation, and it's so remote and it's cold,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: it's freezing colder below, so much of the year they
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: don't really have mosquitoes. There's just not a lot of
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: mosquitoes in Mongolia, and when they do come around for summer,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: that's like a two month window maybe, and then there's
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: no more mosquitoes after that. So with the mosquito nets,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's fine. As soon as I get
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: to Korea or Japan or tile anywhere else I go,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: they're going to have I know exactly where they sell
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: all of the mosquito nets, and that's really fast, easy
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: to make, so I don't have to worry about getting
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: it right now in Mongolia. But the hammock, I just
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to start setting that up and be ready to
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: hamm at camp as soon as I could. So after
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: walking around and thinking about it, I was like, oh, yeah,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't check all of the camping stores. So I
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: looked at a few others and they clearly were not,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and then the last one, i'll just say it now,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: they did have it. I was scrolling through their pictures
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and I hadn't checked this one before because it was
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: the farthest outside of the city and pretty far away
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: from me. But Ulan Batar is not a huge city.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: It's huge for that country. But you can walk east
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: to west across the higher city in maybe two hours.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Like if you go all the way and you're just
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: walking three miles an hour or something, two or three hours,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: you'll get across the whole city. Maybe it might be
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: even shorter. Actually, I'll just say two hours. Like I
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: walked from city center to my apartment in less than
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: an hour, and that's it was pretty It's not it's
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: out of the city, it's on the outskirts. Anyway, I
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: realized that one of the pictures had very tiny sleeping bags.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: And I I was looking at these pictures so closely
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: because there were carabeiners, and there were ropes, and there
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: were lanterns, and there were spades. There were a ton
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: of camping equipment that the other stores didn't have. If
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: they did, they had one or two of these things,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: and then just shoes and jackets. And this thing had
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: a couple boots and a couple jackets, but they also
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: had headlamps and folding chairs and cots and all of
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: these different things sleeping bags. So when I saw these
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: super tiny sleeping bag, I was like, hey, wait a minute.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: So I text messaged this guy and asked if they
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: had hammocks, and he wrote back, yes, we have several
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: hammocks right away in perfect English. And I was like,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: holy crap. So I was going to ask him if
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: he had a link to those or anything. He said,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: up before I could type anything, I'll send you a
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: link in a minute, and he sent me a link
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: with I think three or four different hammocks that he
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: had at his store, and they were one two person
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: hammocks and all this stuff. But he had one ultra
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: lightweight camping hammock one person and it held like three
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: hundred something pounds, so I was like, boom, there we go.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Holds my rucksack. Will hold me with my rucksack. I
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: just have to get it. And then the guy told
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: me we also ship and the shipping fee was two
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: dollars something like that from two hours away if I
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: had to walk there, and I was like, wow, that's
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: pretty great, and there are public transport and taxis and
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: all that. I just I just didn't want to take him, really,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: but it was also a really nice day and it
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: was only one pm. So I told him, you know what,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: I'll just start walking your direction because I'm walking all
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: around the city today, which was true. I was in
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: the middle of the city when I found this guy
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and started texting with him, and he was like, cool,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: just text me before you get here, and I'll be here.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I guess he wasn't in at his store all the
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: time because well, obviously camping wasn't as popular, especially well,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: he told me about all this stuff, so I'll get
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to his his store and then you can listen to
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: our conversation. Because I started walking down the street and
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I realized I really just had to walk down one
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: very long street for forty five minutes, take a rite,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: and then walk for another forty five minutes, and I
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: was listening to a podcast. I was perfect happy, and
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: it was a nice day because it usually is a
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: beautiful day in Mongolia, and I did that. I just
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: walked down listening to stuff, and I eventually neared there
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and it was a tiny shop, but it looked like
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the kind of shop I was looking for. It was
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the first camping store that had so many different items,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and it was utilitarian. It was made for utility, and
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: it had utility tools. It had camping tools and outdoor things,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: spades and fuel and just all this stuff. So I
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: was like, that's it, That's what I'm looking for. And
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: I went in and the guy opened the door for
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: me when he saw me come up, and he spoke
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: very good English, like astonishing good English. And I'm excited
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: to tell you about this guy because he had so
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: many interesting things to say about Mongolia and about camping,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and he was just a fun guy to talk to.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: But I walked in and you can see it in
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: a picture online and the hammock that he had was open,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: but I didn't I want to trust the picture, obviously,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: I wanted to open it myself. So I asked him
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: if I could open up the hammock and check it out,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: and I did, and it was pretty great. It was
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: not as it didn't have the slight give that the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: decathlon hammocks have that I really like, but it was huge. Also,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: it was like half a meter longer than I was
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: used to. It was easily I think it was like
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: three point two meters. It was a big hammock, but
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: it was clearly very strong and very lightweight. It folded
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: down to I don't know eight inches by four inches
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: spherically cylinder wise, it was a folded down to a
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: very small cylinder and the stuff sack was included. It
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: was sewn right into the lining of the hammock, so
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: really perfect it also. The only other problem I had
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: was that it came with straps rather than ropes. Now,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I as an ain't broke, don't fix a kind of guy.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: I'm very used to hammock ropes rather than straps, and
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: ropes have always worked for me. So I wasn't going
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I was just going to buy this and then switch
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: out the straps for ropes. But I had the straps.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I told him, I was just like yeah, I'll buy it.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I was very excited to find something that was pretty
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: close to what I wanted, and his oh, at a
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: great price. I think it was shoot, I can't remember now,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: let's say nineteen dollars. There's no way it was more
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: than that, because I remember it being cheaper than the
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Decathlon hammock, but not on sale, and the Decathlon hammock
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: like retail prices nineteen dollars, so this thing was cheaper
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: than that. Anyway it was. I think it was significantly cheaper,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: like thirteen or dollars or something like that instead. And
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: this was a different brand that I was used to.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: But all this kind of stuff was fine. I just
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: wanted a good lightweight, a strong lightweight hammock. And then
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: after I decided to buy it, we were already talking.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: I think he was really excited to find someone who
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: was really into camping like he was, except as I
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: found out, he was a family man now he had kids,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: and it was really difficult for him to get out camping.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: He still tried to get out once or twice a year,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: but his kids were too young to really take them
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: camping with him yet. And his store was in the city,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: and you don't really want to camp around ulan Batar.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: There's sparse. It's just not great, Like the close by
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: mountains will be totally packed in the two months of
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: summer that people like to camp in. And I was like,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: dang it, cause I came two months before, like it
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: was the nice camping season, so I could have just
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: backpacked across the country. But I don't know. I was
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: really curious about ulan Batar and I'm glad I stayed
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: in the city for a month and this guy had
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: so much advice. He told me about ticks and mosquitoes
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: and I don't know, just local stuff, like I didn't
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: really have to worry about bugs because Mongoli is frozen
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: most of the year. He had a lot of practical
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: camping advice. And let him talk because he was enthusiastic,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: and I could commiserate with him or agree and talk
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: with him about camping stuff. But a lot of this
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: was information I was very familiar with because I'd been
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: backpacking so long. And I think he kind of got
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the sense that I was that I already knew what
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: he was talking about, because he switched and we started
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: talking about Mongolian culture in general and just Mongolia in general.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: He was interested what I thought about being in the city.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And there are a lot of foreigners, but I don't
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: think there are a lot of US Americans or Western
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: people in general, Western Europe or just West. Yeah, all
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Americans or Western European people. There's a lot of Eastern people.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: There's Russians and yeah, the other South Asia people in
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: East Asia. But I don't think he was used to
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: finding someone from the West who willingly traveled to Mongolia.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: And it's funny. I've talked to a lot of people
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: about this, and me included. I've been traveling for fifteen years.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I've been right next to Mongolia in Beijing. I lived
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: for so long and I never visited. Part of it
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: is definitely the travel prices. The train is more expensive
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: than a plane ticket, even though they're very close. You
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: have to switch that. This is going to sound crazy
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: to you, but if you take a train to Mongolia
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: for some reason, there's a law that says you're not
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: allowed to use Chinese wheels. I believe it is to
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: enter Mongolia. So you'll go up to the border, and
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: at the border, your train will stop for about twelve
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: hours and they will physically replace the wheels with Mongolian
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: wheels onto the train, and then the train is allowed
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: to enter Mongolia. But it takes like twelve hours for
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: them to physically replace these train wheels. As you can imagine,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: it takes a while. So yeah, and it costs like
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: three four hundred dollars to go by train. It's still expensive.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: It costs two hundred and fifty. Two hundred and seventy
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: is about the average price. When I was looking for
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: a for a one way ticket from Beijing to Mongolia,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: and I was coming from Beijing, but I just had
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: this feeling I had to go to Mongolia because there
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I was. It was weird. I hadn't been there yet.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: It's such an interesting country, Genghis Khan's country, and nobody
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: knows anything about Mongolia. I mean, I hadn't really thought
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: about it too much. But US Americans, you know, many
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: of my friends know extremely little about China. But they
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: do know that they use like chopsticks, and they do
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: know Chinese lanterns and that kind of stuff. They do know.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: They have a lot of people, but they know zero
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: about Mongolia. They don't know if they use chopsticks or forks.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: They don't know if there are red lanterns in Mongolia,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: like there's zero knowledge about Mongolia with the rest of
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: the world, which is very interesting considering how big of
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: a historical impact Genghis Khan has had. But makes sense
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: considering the population is so low, and it's a more
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: remote place and it's expensive to get to, so there's
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: just not as many. It's relatively expensive. If you're going
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: from Beijing to Busan, which is farther away than Beijing
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: to Mongolia, or let's say maybe about the same it's
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: about the same distance, that's only eighty US dollars. It's
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: three times that much to go to Mongolia. I'm assuming
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the Mongolian government just takes a lot of taxes, because
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: I don't. I still don't understand why air ticket they've
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: always been that expensive too. It's why I never visited before.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: I could always go to South Korea or Japan or heck,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: India for than I could take this two hour flight
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: north to Ulan Batar. Now I did get lucky because
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I was only going to stay in Ulan Batar for
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: or a Mongolian hole for about a month, and then
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: I was going to I had to go back. I
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: have to go back, had to go back for that wedding,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: so I don't know. I had the feeling I shouldnt
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: buy a ticket. Then I wait a couple of weeks
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and I got a ticket for two hundred and seventy,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: which is the one way flight price. But I got
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: a round trip to seventy ticket almost exactly. I think
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: it was two seventy three both ways, and I was like, dang,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: that's a fifty percent sale for me. That's great. So
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I got that, and I kind of looked out on
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: that air ticket. But let's get back to the interesting
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: camping man. So he told me about his family. He
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: told me he did like to camp, but couldn't get
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: out as much as he used to. Plus it wasn't
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the summer yet, and during the summer he can hire
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: college workers to help him in his shop, but since
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: it was still winter, there just weren't many people coming
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: into camping store at all, so it was only him
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: working the shop twenty four to seven. Whenever anybody called
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: up to get anything, he was like, yep, be right there,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: And during normal working hours nine to five, he was
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: there just all day waiting for someone to buy camping stuff.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: And I didn't need any of his other stuff, and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: he pushed a couple like headlamps and stuff. There was
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: a rechargeable headlamp, but the rechargeable headlamp it was like
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: twenty seven dollars and I just had no use for it.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I've had a headlamp once in you know, it doesn't
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: even matter. I used it for a while, but I
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: just don't need a headlamp. I see all right in
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: the night, and I'm not going to be in the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: depths of the rainforest. I am urban camping, so even
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: if there's not a street light, there are streets to
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: follow and roads, and there are reliable maps. So I
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: just didn't need one. And I kind of felt bad
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: that I didn't buy anything else, but I would have
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: bought it and thrown it away, And I think it
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: would have been more insulting to him as a Mongolian.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: If I had, like charity, donated money to him, maybe
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: that would have been fine, because people like money, especially
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: shop owners. But I say that because while we're in
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: this really interesting conversation, we were just talking about different cultures.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: He had worked in a mining operation overseas, and he
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: told me he worked with an international crew Basically there
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: was a Russian and a Filipino, and he worked with
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: all these different people from different countries and he just
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: noticed how different they were. What was also fascinating is
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: that was where he learned his English. He learned it
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: entirely on that one mining job that he did for
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: a couple of years. And I couldn't help but immediately
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: think of my own Mandarin Chinese. And I had been
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: living in China, not just in a place like in
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: a business that spoke Chinese, but I was living in
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: China for six years plus. My Chinese got pretty good,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: but it was not as good as this guy's English.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: His English was phenomenal. And he was with, like I said,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: an international crew, so most of these people are speaking
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: English as a second language, and this was his second language,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't perfect, but it was phenomenal. It was
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: extremely impressive. And we were discussing the different cultures of
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: like the Philippines in Russia and Mongolia and the US
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: and just all this stuff that's really fun to talk about.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: If you find someone else who's interested in that kind
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: of stuff and who pays attention two different cultures to sociology,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I guess we can call it okay. So he mentioned
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the different personalities on his crew, and he specifically mentioned Filipino,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: who he said was a super nice guy and would
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: agree to do anything he was asked to do on
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the crew, but as soon as the crew chief left
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and the Filipino guy had agreed to something, he would
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: just not do it. And this Mongolian guy was telling
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: me he seemed to think that was a Filipino thing,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: because he had worked with other Filipinos and it was
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: very similar in each crew that he worked on. They
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: would agree to do work and then kind of work
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: on it super slowly and just not get into it,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: whereas Mongolians will argue whenever they're told to do something,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and they just as he told me, Mongolians will argue
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: a lot, but then they'll do whatever job they're assigned
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: to do by their boss, and they'll do it quickly
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: and like efficiently. And because he brought it up, I
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, I haven't noticed that Mongolians men
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: and women seem very aggressive compared to other cultures I've
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: been in, and he was already nodding along like yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: So he with that agreement. I asked him why are
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Mongolians so much more aggressive than other countries I've been to?
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: And he said one of the most interesting things I
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: heard the entire time I was in that country. He
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: told me it's because Mongolians have never been conquered. Now,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: that's not technically true, like they did join I think
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: the Qing dynasty from China for a while, but they
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: never like Mongoli itself, was never comfortable being part of China,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: and it eventually declared their independence and fought for their independence.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Let me check nineteen twenty one, something like that, nineteen
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: twenty one to establish de facto independence and nineteen forty
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: five until they gained international recognition as an independent country.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: But for most of their history, yeah, they were not conquered.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Like when the Spain, Spain, Portugal were taking over Asian islands,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: they didn't take over Mongolia. Mongolia took over other countries.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: And that's what this camping store owner was explaining to me.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: That's why it's it's so fascinating to travel and talk
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: to people because I'm I don't know, I don't know anything.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I get to talk to people and they explain how
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: the world works to me as they understand it, and
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: even if that's not one hundred percent accurate objectively, because
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: it's their subjective thing. There's plenty of facts, like the
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: history of Mongolia that this Mongolian is going to know
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: much better than I do, and that one line has
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: so much insight into so many curious behaviors I had
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: seen in Mongolia, the general cultural aggression, not angry or violent,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: just very direct and straightforward, more so than US Americans,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: which are apparently, according to the rest of the world,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: extremely direct and straightforward. And that makes sense to me.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: It does seem like that. And he said, we've never
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: been conquered. We are the conquerors. And I thought that
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: was so interesting when he said that and then explained it.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: You know, Genghis Khan and they controlled parts of China
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: and other countries in Russia and they just won where
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: they did and did what they wanted, you know. And
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: he didn't. He wasn't like and murdering people is great, Like,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: he wasn't into all the awful parts of the history,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: but he was like, that explains why Mongolians today are
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: so aggressive because they've never been suborned. There's never been
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: a civilization that wholly owned them, even when they were
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: under the auspices of Chinese rule. It was pretty clear
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: historically that there was never like, ah, yes, we are
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: part of the Chinese Empire. There was like, we're Mongolian
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and will agree to be part of this empire? Who
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: really wants us to be part of them? But then
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: they got tired of that. So that was a great conversation.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: And I had been there for three weeks in wondering
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: about the cultural aggression and the directness, and then this
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: guy gave me the perfect line and just like, that's
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: why we've never been conquered. You go to the Philippines,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: They've been conquered by like twenty different countries over the
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: past few hundred years, and so they're fairly subservient. If
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: there's any historians out there who are like, that's total crap,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: you should reach out and let me know, because from
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: what I know my rudimentary knowledge of world history, that
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: does seem correct. But if you have a different take
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: on it, or you know the facts better, yeah, definitely
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: let me know. Because that was a pretty fascinating revelation
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: to me. That made a lot of puzzle pieces fall
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: in place that I had noticed. I got the hammock
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and after my conversation, I said thank you so much.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: I left to make glowing review because there were only
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know, five or six reviews, and especially at
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: that point, any new five star review can really help
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: on Google Maps or whatever there are. So I left
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: them a five star and it was a five star shop.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: That's that was the best camping shop, including the Catholic.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: This camping shop was better than all the other ones
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: in Uhlanbatar by far. He actually had he had anything
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: I needed for camping. I just already had most of
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: the things I needed. So I just got my hammock
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: with its straps not ropes, and went out. And I
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: was going to test the hammock right away because on
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: the way out of the city I had crossed over
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: a river that was lined with trees, and I was
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: like perfect. But on the way to the river out
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: of the camping shop, I got distracted because there was
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: some barbecue going on and I hadn't had any Mongolian
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: barbecue yet, and there were some thick slabs of beef
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: hanging out on a wire rack, and he had a
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: nice conservative grill a bed of coals going and I
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: was like, man, I haven't got this yet, Let's get it.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Oh wait, did I already talk? If I already talked
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: about this, I'm sorry, let me know. So I ordered
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: like a kebab, basically a stick, but it was huge,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: like one was clearly going to be enough meat for me.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: And I got it with the meal set, So you
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: get it with right, You can only order it with
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: the meal set, or I would have just got the kabab.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: But so I got like rice and a salad with it,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: and he was like, okay, just order from the girl inside.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: So I went inside because she's the cashier, and I
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: ordered it with her, but she didn't know what I
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: was saying. She was super confused, and I pointed the
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: picture and she was still confused. And I think because
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: I was on the outskirts of the city, I was
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: kind of getting that, Oh my god, a foreigner is
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: here talking to me. What is happening? And then she
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: turned around spoken Mongoli into the guy and he was
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: like beef, beef in English, and she was like, oh, beef,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: beef and I was like, yeah, beef, and I kept
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: pointing at the same picture I had been pointing to,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: and she was like oh, and she started laughing. And
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: then like the girl, I thought I was saying beef,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: and it sounded like beef, but I was saying a
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: different foreigner word, apparently because they all spoke English. I
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: don't know. It is confusing, but everybody laughed with her,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: and it was just some some goof on her part.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: I guess. Oh. I found the price the hammock was
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: nineteen dollars. Yes, but it was a great hammock, so
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: no complaints from me. And that's how much the Decathlon
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: retail was, so that's fine and okay, nineteen dollars for
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: a hammock. The other one lasted a decade. This one
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: seemed even stronger than the Decathlon ones. So if I
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: sleep in that hammock for one day, I'm pretty much
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: I paid for the hammock nineteen dollars. Many places are
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen dollars. The Japanese house, I did one to two nights,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: and the hammock has paid for itself. And every night
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: I sleep in a hammock outdoors for free. After that,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I'm saving that amount of money. I'm saving whatever the
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: local ten dollars a night is or five dollars a night,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. I'm just saving money by sleeping more
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: comfortably because I love sleeping in hammocks. Yeah, I just
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: noticed I did actually write the price, so it was
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: just in a higher up part of the list of
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: my stuff to talk about. Okay, So I got my
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: beef and I started eating, and I was like, holy crap,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: this is the best beef. And then I took a
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: couple more bites and again there's like huge chunks of meat,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: but very very lean. They clearly had fat in them,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't marbled fat. It was just in between
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: the fibers, so it was very easy to bite through
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: still but a very extremely rich flavor, and it was
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: so good. And then I was like, wait a minute,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: this is too good for beef. Is this yak? And
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: when the girl came out to clean up a table
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: or something, I just waved her over and I had
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: translated to yak, and I was like, is this yak?
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: She's like, yay, I'm beef. So they call beef yak,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: at least some restaurants definitely do. Because I asked other
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: people about beef, is this a yak dish? And they
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: were like, yeah, it's beef. So I was actually eating yak,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: which yak jerky is my favorite jerky, and yak meat
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: I'm now like, dang, it's so it's it's such an
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: interesting it's a little more gamey. It has that more
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: of that grass venisony feel than cattle beef does. But
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: maybe beef I'm just so used to they always eat
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: grains now rather than grass. I'm just used to grain
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: fed beef rather than grass fed beef. This yak man,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: it just tasted so good and you just eat a
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: huge chunk of lean meat and it was perfectly barbecued,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: and the salad was really nice and the rice was good,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: but the meat was fantastic. It was really great, and
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: I was glad to find out I liked yak as
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: much as I thought I would. And then it was
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: time to test the hammock. So I walked back the
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: couple of hours whatever to my apartment, just figured on
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: the way i'd find something, and I found a pretty
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: big park. Their parks are huge in Ulambatar. So I
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: found a huge park and just a quick and dirty check,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: I just threw up the hammock real quick with the straps,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: and much to my surprise, I loved how the straps worked.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Now I could have got straps form my Decathalon hammock,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: but I chose ropes instead because the straps seemed slippery,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: like very very slick, very not slick, very smooth, seemed
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: extremely smooth, like a seat belt smooth, and I was like, man,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: that's not going to be as good to hold up.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: The ropes were a little more coarse, and so I
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: used them. I just figured the friction would be better
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: with the ropes than they would with the straps. So
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: fifteen years ago or whatever, I got my ropes instead
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: of my straps, and then I never went back as
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: the ropes worked great. They do work great. They still
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: work great. The ropes I got I exchanged the decathalon
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: ropes for ropes I got in Taiwan. I actually exchanged
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: them for paracord first, and then paracord was too thin.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: It worked well, but not perfectly, so I ended up
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: getting ropes from Taiwan. Those are ropes, lasted for ten years.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: They work great. But these straps are smaller, They're not
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: as heavy. They're way easier to manipulate, Like I can
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: bend them a lot easier into knots and stuff, and
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: they fold down smaller and they hold me up fine.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: It's a very slick material. So I was like, man,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think this is going to work. But then
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: I tested it and I realized I just chose ropes.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: I never actually tested straps before. They work great. I
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: prefer them now to the rope. To be perfectly upfront
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: and honest about this. You know, I find something new,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: it works better now I like that thing. Yeah, there's
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: just a billion different things to try, and I haven't
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: tried straps on my hammock yet. Now that I have,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna stick with straps because it's convenient, lighter weight,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: easier to tie up, easier to take down because when
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: I take them down, since they are more slick, the
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: knots come out even easier. Sometimes it's difficult to take
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: out knot ropes for hammock, even the quick slip knot
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: that that I make, like, I make really quick release knots.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: I have a very simple hammock setup. Hammock not set
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: up too. But with these, like seat belty, very thin,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: they're much small. They're like a third the width of
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: a you know, a seat belt. They were great. I
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: like hammock straps. I'm gonna stick with straps from now on.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: So I was very happy to discover that. And when
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: I got inside the hammock, I was like, eh, not
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: as den d not. I can't like push my elbows
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: out like I could the decathlon ones and kind of
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: rested on the fabric. It was a little a little
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: more restrictive, but still perfectly comfortable, and I fell asleep
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: almost immediately, and I just took a little nap and
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: then got up and took it down super easily because
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: of the straps, packed it up into the stuff sack
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: very easily again, and then I had a great idea
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: to make this hammock even more portable than it already
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: was with its stuff sack, and I will tell you
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: about that in the next ramble On episode. Thank you
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: so much for listening. I will talk to you soon.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: I hope your day is going great. If you want
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: to talk to me or you have any questions, just
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: write to a bit of a Rambler at gmail dot
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: com or bit of a Rambler on Blue Sky or
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: on Lemmy. I'm just hanging out so we can talk
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: and uh yeah, I have a great rest of your day.