at the grasslands

sorry, the pictures are really out of order. it's my VPN...

The horse ride was much more expensive than I thought it should have been- 300 yuan. My friends couldn’t talk them down any further. In comparison, the overnight tour I could have done with the hostel that even included food would have been 380 yuan. UGH. I realized that it was a total tourist trap and our driver probably knew it. This is why you don’t trust those people at the bus stations! After paying that, I only had 50 yuan left in my wallet, and I still needed to pay the driver 100 yuan for taking me there and I had not eaten anything. This definitely made me a little nervous.

A guide took us on 3 beautiful horses off onto the plains. We were essentially riding bareback- there was just a little mat under us so it was pretty uncomfortable, especially when the horse would trot because you were just bouncing up and down really hard. The horse actually started to run for like 5 seconds, which felt cool, but the guide made the horse stop. The couple told me later that we had not paid enough money for the guide to let the horse run. And I had thought it was a safety issue, lol. So the rest of the time the horse was just going really slow, despite the boyfriend yelling at the horse to go faster for almost the entire duration of the ride.

Although the grasslands were definitely a cool site to see, I was less than impressed with the ride and what we got for our money. One of the guys even insulted me there, flippantly waving his hand at me and saying that I didn’t understand anything. So much for being dressed up like a nice Mongolian man in his costume. At least the girlfriend stood up for me and told him that I did understand and spoke well (albeit a slight exaggeration, hehe). Afterwards, I just wanted to get some water and food, as I still hadn’t eaten and it was like 1 pm.


We went to a yurt (like a central Asian dwelling, see picture) and a woman served us some hot water. I asked about food but the couple told me that it would be really expensive. Seeing that I only had 50 yuan left, I figured I would not be able to get anything. We rested in the yurt for a while, and I just laid down to give them some space. When I sat back up, I saw that the couple was having this all out photo shoot with their smart phones. I was like oh good lord, who are these people. Well, they certainly were not embarrassed about it because they didn’t stop after I got up, and even encouraged me to join in. I took a few pictures with each of them but I think they quickly saw that I was not a very fun model. The girl kept changing positions during our shoot, for example, turning her back to me so we could sit back to back, so I decided that she was the creativity director for this shoot and just copied her. Unfortunately I do not have any of these pictures documented on my camera. Then the girl took out a small mirror and put an additional two pounds of makeup on her face. I had to laugh, here was a very pretty girl who looked like a clown with her (by American standards) extremely feminine boyfriend. I wouldn’t be surprised if they shared their clothes. Finally, they told me that they thought the grasslands were boring and wanted to leave, and I didn’t really have much of a choice but to comply.
As we were going back to the car we got word that a show was about to start. The show consisted of a few cowboys doing some tricks on their horses, like making the horse go really fast and then trying to grab something off the ground. It looked pretty dangerous. They also wrestled, which was a little nasty because there was horse poo all over the ground. Then they named the emperor and the empress and made them ride around on the horse. As soon as I realized this was happening, I wanted to hide behind something. I felt many people looking at me but luckily I escaped being chosen because they made those poor people pay 100 yuan each!! I would have been in debt to them.


Nothing that eventful occurred on the drive back to Hohhot, but once we got into town I got a little nervous about my money situation. I was too scared to tell the driver I needed to go to an ATM until we reached our destination. Luckily, there was an ATM right next to us. He said it was okay so I ran out, forgetting to say good bye to my new friends. I had a little scare at the ATM machine because it wasn’t letting me take money out at first but finally it worked. He looked relieved when he saw me running back.

I had no clue where I was, so I asked him for directions to the train station. I ran off with the sole intention of getting food as soon as possible. Very soon I caught sight of side street with food vendors so I went down it and bought the first thing I saw. As I was paying, I heard a honk behind me and it was the driver! He had come down the street to tell me that I was going the wrong way to the train station. I told him that I was buying food first, and he looked a little embarrassed and drove off. It was good to see that even the prickly money swindlers have a heart too though!

I brought my food to the front of Dico’s so I could immediately get food there next. I really don’t think I have ever been that hungry in my whole life. As I was eating several people started gathering at a distance to watch me eat. I waved at them and downed the rest of my food. Hohhot really needs to diversify its population…