Oh well, al least its a white Christmas, although as the snow has been on the ground for a few days now the definition of white is a little grey, literally. This morning dawned clear with a blue sky that was to last until mid-day when the pollution elbowed its way in sideways – though the sun is still spreading quite a strong light its hard to tell exactly where it is coming from anymore.
As a contract worker Christmas day is just another day in the office if it falls within one of your work shifts. Along with me there are 3 Indonesians, one Peruvian and an Aussie sitting out Christmas here (today is a day off for the local staff) so for lunch I mustered everyone to head out to The Cassablanca.
The Cassa, as its known when we are being polite, is one of the original UB expat watering holes. In the early nineties it was apparently one of the only places you could hang-out and get a drink. Even three years ago it was mainly ‘our’ bar and the scene of many a late night. These days with the increased number of miners and drillers in town it has lost some of its uniqueness, or maybe we no longer party as hard as we used to. Anyway, two of the things it still has going for it is an exceedingly attractive bar-staff (hi Cindy) and the long-standing running joke of the duck on the menu.
We hate to think how much duck Willy, the Cassa’s owner, bought when it first appeared on the menu a couple of years ago as the ‘Special of the day’, but since that time I have never known the place to have run out. At the very least he must have a container of it round the back, which is fine in a Mongolian winter but slightly more worrying as a storage device in the summertime… Anyway, the ‘special of the decade’ as we know it has never given me a problem and as a substitute Christmas meal is as close as you can get to the real thing in UB.
So, the duck, and a couple of bottles of Willie’s finest French merlot. I can safely say that about the wine by default as there is only one red on the menu – at least its reasonably priced at 15,000 tugs (12 USD, 7 quid), some places in town would have the nerve to at least double that (bonjour mes amis…). Drinking wine in the Cassa is almost a sacrilege anyhow – traditionally it should be Tiger beer in a bottle though that is one thing they have been running out of lately, with a switch to Heineken being necessary.
Now its back to the office to sleep it off before the main company Christmas party this evening. A tradition Christmas kimchi dinner in the Seoul Restaurant… Don’t ask me who thought of that one!
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Dodgy nighclubs in UB
Just to give a warning… “Strings” nightclub in UB is one of the more popular places to head on a Friday night and you may hear about it and visit it if you are passing through UB.
In the last few months 3 of my friends have run into trouble when leaving the nightclub in the morning hours. In one incident a doorman and policeman did absolutely nothing to stop a robbery while in another incident the doorman actually joined in an attack.There is a definite pattern of local guys targeting foreigners leaving this place late at night. If you are out with a local girl then be particularly careful as all attacks I know of were against long-term ex-pats leaving the club with their wives/girlfriends. If you go to Strings then try to leave in a group of several people.
This is what my friend wrote about last night…
“Just a heads up about strings – last night I was pushed into a taxi with my girlfriend and there was some bloke on the back seat. I climbed out and he grabbed my girlfriend so I had to pull her out, by which point 2 other guys were trying to push me back in. To cut a long story short there was a struggle and once I was free had to hand over my cash, phone and credit card. Meanwhile a policeman and a strings security guard stood no less than 2 metres away watching doing f**k all.
The taxi was just on the street not in the car park. Basically not a good idea to leave the joint with less than 4 people … last night I was jut trying to get into a taxi and go home. There had been no trouble in the club prior to leaving.”
Let’s be careful out there…
BTW, new images from the October Kazakh eagle festival in west Mongolia are up on my website.
In the last few months 3 of my friends have run into trouble when leaving the nightclub in the morning hours. In one incident a doorman and policeman did absolutely nothing to stop a robbery while in another incident the doorman actually joined in an attack.There is a definite pattern of local guys targeting foreigners leaving this place late at night. If you are out with a local girl then be particularly careful as all attacks I know of were against long-term ex-pats leaving the club with their wives/girlfriends. If you go to Strings then try to leave in a group of several people.
This is what my friend wrote about last night…
“Just a heads up about strings – last night I was pushed into a taxi with my girlfriend and there was some bloke on the back seat. I climbed out and he grabbed my girlfriend so I had to pull her out, by which point 2 other guys were trying to push me back in. To cut a long story short there was a struggle and once I was free had to hand over my cash, phone and credit card. Meanwhile a policeman and a strings security guard stood no less than 2 metres away watching doing f**k all.
The taxi was just on the street not in the car park. Basically not a good idea to leave the joint with less than 4 people … last night I was jut trying to get into a taxi and go home. There had been no trouble in the club prior to leaving.”
Let’s be careful out there…
BTW, new images from the October Kazakh eagle festival in west Mongolia are up on my website.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Elephants and over the counter drugs in Bangkok
26 Nov 2005. Bangkok.
There I was in the middle of Bangkok, sat on the corner of Soi 5 and Sukhumvit, drinking a icy Singha and watching the world go by, when I was interrupted by the ‘tri-ummph’ of an adolescent Loxodonta cyclotis Elephas maximum. Only one of the strange things I had seen so far this evening. The mahout, or elephant handler, was leading his charge along the street and pavement between the bars and cafes, every time he passed a table he’d offer sugarcane or bananas that people could buy to feed to the elephant. Apparently there are up to several hundred elephants working the tourist route in Bangkok. Due to a ban on logging back in the 90’s many elephants were brought to the cities where they are hidden on the outskirts during the daytime (just how do you hide an elephant…) and led through the bar-streets in the evenings. Needing up to 250kg of food each day you can see why it’s better that someone else pays for it.
Many elephants working in the countryside used to suffer from amphetamine addiction when their mahouts attempt to squeeze that little bit more out of them, like a Russian trainer does with his champion shot-putter. By my experience earlier in the day I pondered heading back for some good drugs to spike a banana or two with… get that heffalump on a serious amount of speed, or E, or Viagra and follow it down the street for a seriously amusing, but potentially destructive time. Earlier in the day I’d been into a chemist to restock my travelling drugs cabinet and as usual in Thailand couldn’t get exactly what I wanted but was offered far better alternatives. Firstly I wanted something to help me sleep on overnight flights and when jet-lag has stuffed up all my timings. In the UK I use a over-the-counter table from Boots called Sleepeaze or something similar, here I was offered something that when I looked it up later on the net turned out to be an antidepressant with the added side-effects of suicidal tendencies – which makes me think the manufactures of the antidepressant don’t have the formula quite right somehow… Secondly I wanted a decent headache pill so asked for some paracetamol with codine, despite most clinical research showing that the amount of codine needed to show any useful analgesic effect is way above that contained in most ‘combined’ over-the-counter painkillers, I personally like it for the placebo effect. Anyway, told you could only get codine at a hospital I was offered tramadol instead, an artificial opiate with similar addictive properties (mind you, this is one of the few pills that is know to cure some migraine headaches within a hour or two so for some people it may be worth a stab).
Going to have to cut this story short I’m afraid. Was going to write more on the sights of the ‘press the flesh’ district but Wales is about to play Australia in a rugby international and I have a bar lined up that is showing it on the big-screen.
There I was in the middle of Bangkok, sat on the corner of Soi 5 and Sukhumvit, drinking a icy Singha and watching the world go by, when I was interrupted by the ‘tri-ummph’ of an adolescent Loxodonta cyclotis Elephas maximum. Only one of the strange things I had seen so far this evening. The mahout, or elephant handler, was leading his charge along the street and pavement between the bars and cafes, every time he passed a table he’d offer sugarcane or bananas that people could buy to feed to the elephant. Apparently there are up to several hundred elephants working the tourist route in Bangkok. Due to a ban on logging back in the 90’s many elephants were brought to the cities where they are hidden on the outskirts during the daytime (just how do you hide an elephant…) and led through the bar-streets in the evenings. Needing up to 250kg of food each day you can see why it’s better that someone else pays for it.
Many elephants working in the countryside used to suffer from amphetamine addiction when their mahouts attempt to squeeze that little bit more out of them, like a Russian trainer does with his champion shot-putter. By my experience earlier in the day I pondered heading back for some good drugs to spike a banana or two with… get that heffalump on a serious amount of speed, or E, or Viagra and follow it down the street for a seriously amusing, but potentially destructive time. Earlier in the day I’d been into a chemist to restock my travelling drugs cabinet and as usual in Thailand couldn’t get exactly what I wanted but was offered far better alternatives. Firstly I wanted something to help me sleep on overnight flights and when jet-lag has stuffed up all my timings. In the UK I use a over-the-counter table from Boots called Sleepeaze or something similar, here I was offered something that when I looked it up later on the net turned out to be an antidepressant with the added side-effects of suicidal tendencies – which makes me think the manufactures of the antidepressant don’t have the formula quite right somehow… Secondly I wanted a decent headache pill so asked for some paracetamol with codine, despite most clinical research showing that the amount of codine needed to show any useful analgesic effect is way above that contained in most ‘combined’ over-the-counter painkillers, I personally like it for the placebo effect. Anyway, told you could only get codine at a hospital I was offered tramadol instead, an artificial opiate with similar addictive properties (mind you, this is one of the few pills that is know to cure some migraine headaches within a hour or two so for some people it may be worth a stab).
Going to have to cut this story short I’m afraid. Was going to write more on the sights of the ‘press the flesh’ district but Wales is about to play Australia in a rugby international and I have a bar lined up that is showing it on the big-screen.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Gone tropo, Thai and Mongolian cuisine...
22 Nov 2004, An island in the Andaman Sea.
Hmm, DEET, Diethyl tolamide, the manly smell of the tropics. To be honest I think it's starting to affect me in more ways than one. At the start of the trip I'd just been using it on my ankles in the evening to stop the damn mosquitoes biting in the
windless void under the terrace dining table. Unfortunately, my trousers were made of a super hi-tech fabric recommended for it's high wicking capability, a high sun-protection factor and a high thread count that supposedly stopped the airborne buggers from poking their proboscis through; nethertheless the fabric did tend to dissolve somewhat when exposed to this lethal bug-killing C12H17NO cocktail. As a result my trousers had been trimmed several times and were now at the 'Bermuda' stage. Any shorter and they would offer so little protection I'd have to be using the bug-repellent rather too close to home for comfort, and one of the warnings on the back of the little orange bottle specifically mentioned not to use the stuff on underclothes... Now, were I here with a close companion then, after making sure she was wearing synthetics, I'd certainly suggest a moderate application of DEET to prevent any bites where they were least wanted. Twenty minutes later I expect the chemicals to start performing a slow panty disappearing act - self-removing knickers
- how wonderful. Many years ago I heard a talk by a chemical engineer who was famous for getting a girl's pants off from right across a parking lot with an invisible chemical cloud (at the time this almost sealed the direction of my career, why I ended up doing rocks is totally beyond me). Somehow I think my bug-repellent wouldn't quite live up to that but it would be a fun experiment anyway.
For some reason this trip I've ended up in a collections of beach bungalows on an island in Thailand populated by a whole band of thirty-somethings. Now I've no problems with those in their third decade on this wondrous planet, I'll even admit to being there myself, but I have survived so far without the baggage that all my neighbours seem to have brought along with them. At this particular moment I seem to be surrounded by free-living Swedes and their multitude of loud, gregarious offspring who need to be controlled by loud voices from mater and pater alike, who choose to sit twenty metres away at the bar while the kids make raucous play on the adjoining terrace to mine. All I can currently think of (apart from the odd persistent mosquito) is the Swedish chef out of The Muppet Show.
Actually, the mosquitoes and the Swedish muppet chef are not the only things on my mind at the moment. A few nights ago a moonlit swim seemed a good idea after a few relaxing beverages sourced from the beachfront bars adjacent to my current abode. I should however, have remembered that apparently I secrete a chemical unknown to man but extremely attractive to jellyfish. I've never been too good at sexing jellyfish, as usually I'm swimming in the opposite direction exceedingly rapidly and additionally I don't have a very biological background (apart from obviously being the product of one), this time it was also dark to boot. But I seem to have something that does it for either mister or missus J. Fish. Now that is exceedingly worrying, as a friend I used to work with was also a Mr. J Fish but as far as I know I never had this effect on him. Rather the contrary I would guess by some of our later late-night discussions fuelled variously by eastern-European pivo, Turkish bira and far-flung cocktails Mr Fish was in the habit of bringing back recipes for from his latest travels - but harsh-words can be forgiven when previously there were such delightful evenings as dreaming up half of a screenplay for the as yet unwritten film 'Blodwen - Daughter of Darkness'. We were going through a Tom Jones episode at the timeֹ fantastic days! But I digress, to get back on track - jellyfish. Yes, mosquitoes, a damn loud load of Swedes and an arm full of pockmarks from my latest jellyfish encounter. These are currently the things on my mind.
Now I'm getting hungry, it's time to go eat and I have no idea where this article is leading. Looking back I realise I didn't really have much idea where it was going form the startֹ I blame Hunter S. Thompson. Why? Well, firstly he's dead so he ain't going to complain about it, and secondly, I've almost just finished his first volume collection of 'The Gonzo Papers' and am following a train of consciousness thing here. Reading the book, it would have helped knowing more about Nixon and Watergate for a chunking middle section of chapters but his off-the-wall, yet all the same spot-on observations, of politics and social issues at that time have a relevance that still applies to the world today. I'm still not tying things up am I?
Okay. Now I've eaten, a perfectly spiced mango salad and prawns in chill and sweet basil, lets move to food. I hate to say it, but Mongoliaֹ What the heck went wrong? In summertime the wheels on my jeep act as an automatic herb-press and the smell of sage is almost ever present when I leave your rutted dirt-tracks and decide to place two parallel tracks of my own across your vast open, and smoother, steppes (slightly worrying this, as sage-brush is a sure sign of over-grazing in the American prairies). But in your cuisine is there one single herb or spice? Dammit, your people were proud raiders of the silk-road, which also carried caravans of spice from Asia to Europe. With all that pillaging and eventual conquest didn't you get even a slight taste for flavour? Was no slave-girl captured who startled you with her ways of cooking that didn't involve either boiling or steaming? The often unpleasant aroma in my block's stairwell would suggest otherwise. The tiny island that I'm on off the south-coast of Thailand only has a resident population of around 5000 human heads, and I can go into 90% of the beach-shack restaurants here and get a better meal and better service than anywhere in the whole of Ulaanbaatar, a city of over one million (the 10% of places that are not better are the ones that serve meals 'designed for the tourists' rather than just national dishes ׀ in fact I had a plate of cucumber and carrot salad that was advertised as cucumber and ginger the other night in one such place, somewhere I shall not be frequenting again). There used to be one moderately decent Thai restaurant in UB, it wasn't fantastic but it was good enough to warrant a visit at least once a week and I believe it used to have a Thai cook. All of a sudden, about a year or two ago, it changed staff and obviously no longer had any true pretence of being Thai. Meals came on personal plates with the main and rice already combined in set amounts and out of the blue all the soups and curries developed an almost impenetrable half-inch thick layer of nasty oil on their surface. That much oil is a sure sign that some local intervention was now involved directly in the cooking process. Anyhow, when I get back to UB later this month ׀ restaurants had better be prepared. This blog is going to feature a regular, no holds barred, restaurant review. You'll be judged on the quality of meals, the choice available (instant point deduction for all places with vast menus of 'sorry, no have', especially if you take my order and don't tell me until twenty minutes later, eh Dolce Vita?), service, ambiance (they'll be a lot of places looking that one up), location and a host of other things I'll be adding as I think of them. Name and shame is the name of the game and if you try and deliberately poison me I'll know where to send the boys round to. Of course, golden stars and brownie points will be awarded for a job well done, fine food, good value
(unlucky the French Bistro) and comedy evenings (everyone say hi to Basil at Flowery Twats, oops, sorry, Faulty Towers).
On that note, and blatant threat (it's a fairly safe threat with the number of hit's this blog getsֹ) I'm off to sleep.
Hmm, DEET, Diethyl tolamide, the manly smell of the tropics. To be honest I think it's starting to affect me in more ways than one. At the start of the trip I'd just been using it on my ankles in the evening to stop the damn mosquitoes biting in the
windless void under the terrace dining table. Unfortunately, my trousers were made of a super hi-tech fabric recommended for it's high wicking capability, a high sun-protection factor and a high thread count that supposedly stopped the airborne buggers from poking their proboscis through; nethertheless the fabric did tend to dissolve somewhat when exposed to this lethal bug-killing C12H17NO cocktail. As a result my trousers had been trimmed several times and were now at the 'Bermuda' stage. Any shorter and they would offer so little protection I'd have to be using the bug-repellent rather too close to home for comfort, and one of the warnings on the back of the little orange bottle specifically mentioned not to use the stuff on underclothes... Now, were I here with a close companion then, after making sure she was wearing synthetics, I'd certainly suggest a moderate application of DEET to prevent any bites where they were least wanted. Twenty minutes later I expect the chemicals to start performing a slow panty disappearing act - self-removing knickers
- how wonderful. Many years ago I heard a talk by a chemical engineer who was famous for getting a girl's pants off from right across a parking lot with an invisible chemical cloud (at the time this almost sealed the direction of my career, why I ended up doing rocks is totally beyond me). Somehow I think my bug-repellent wouldn't quite live up to that but it would be a fun experiment anyway.
For some reason this trip I've ended up in a collections of beach bungalows on an island in Thailand populated by a whole band of thirty-somethings. Now I've no problems with those in their third decade on this wondrous planet, I'll even admit to being there myself, but I have survived so far without the baggage that all my neighbours seem to have brought along with them. At this particular moment I seem to be surrounded by free-living Swedes and their multitude of loud, gregarious offspring who need to be controlled by loud voices from mater and pater alike, who choose to sit twenty metres away at the bar while the kids make raucous play on the adjoining terrace to mine. All I can currently think of (apart from the odd persistent mosquito) is the Swedish chef out of The Muppet Show.
Actually, the mosquitoes and the Swedish muppet chef are not the only things on my mind at the moment. A few nights ago a moonlit swim seemed a good idea after a few relaxing beverages sourced from the beachfront bars adjacent to my current abode. I should however, have remembered that apparently I secrete a chemical unknown to man but extremely attractive to jellyfish. I've never been too good at sexing jellyfish, as usually I'm swimming in the opposite direction exceedingly rapidly and additionally I don't have a very biological background (apart from obviously being the product of one), this time it was also dark to boot. But I seem to have something that does it for either mister or missus J. Fish. Now that is exceedingly worrying, as a friend I used to work with was also a Mr. J Fish but as far as I know I never had this effect on him. Rather the contrary I would guess by some of our later late-night discussions fuelled variously by eastern-European pivo, Turkish bira and far-flung cocktails Mr Fish was in the habit of bringing back recipes for from his latest travels - but harsh-words can be forgiven when previously there were such delightful evenings as dreaming up half of a screenplay for the as yet unwritten film 'Blodwen - Daughter of Darkness'. We were going through a Tom Jones episode at the timeֹ fantastic days! But I digress, to get back on track - jellyfish. Yes, mosquitoes, a damn loud load of Swedes and an arm full of pockmarks from my latest jellyfish encounter. These are currently the things on my mind.
Now I'm getting hungry, it's time to go eat and I have no idea where this article is leading. Looking back I realise I didn't really have much idea where it was going form the startֹ I blame Hunter S. Thompson. Why? Well, firstly he's dead so he ain't going to complain about it, and secondly, I've almost just finished his first volume collection of 'The Gonzo Papers' and am following a train of consciousness thing here. Reading the book, it would have helped knowing more about Nixon and Watergate for a chunking middle section of chapters but his off-the-wall, yet all the same spot-on observations, of politics and social issues at that time have a relevance that still applies to the world today. I'm still not tying things up am I?
Okay. Now I've eaten, a perfectly spiced mango salad and prawns in chill and sweet basil, lets move to food. I hate to say it, but Mongoliaֹ What the heck went wrong? In summertime the wheels on my jeep act as an automatic herb-press and the smell of sage is almost ever present when I leave your rutted dirt-tracks and decide to place two parallel tracks of my own across your vast open, and smoother, steppes (slightly worrying this, as sage-brush is a sure sign of over-grazing in the American prairies). But in your cuisine is there one single herb or spice? Dammit, your people were proud raiders of the silk-road, which also carried caravans of spice from Asia to Europe. With all that pillaging and eventual conquest didn't you get even a slight taste for flavour? Was no slave-girl captured who startled you with her ways of cooking that didn't involve either boiling or steaming? The often unpleasant aroma in my block's stairwell would suggest otherwise. The tiny island that I'm on off the south-coast of Thailand only has a resident population of around 5000 human heads, and I can go into 90% of the beach-shack restaurants here and get a better meal and better service than anywhere in the whole of Ulaanbaatar, a city of over one million (the 10% of places that are not better are the ones that serve meals 'designed for the tourists' rather than just national dishes ׀ in fact I had a plate of cucumber and carrot salad that was advertised as cucumber and ginger the other night in one such place, somewhere I shall not be frequenting again). There used to be one moderately decent Thai restaurant in UB, it wasn't fantastic but it was good enough to warrant a visit at least once a week and I believe it used to have a Thai cook. All of a sudden, about a year or two ago, it changed staff and obviously no longer had any true pretence of being Thai. Meals came on personal plates with the main and rice already combined in set amounts and out of the blue all the soups and curries developed an almost impenetrable half-inch thick layer of nasty oil on their surface. That much oil is a sure sign that some local intervention was now involved directly in the cooking process. Anyhow, when I get back to UB later this month ׀ restaurants had better be prepared. This blog is going to feature a regular, no holds barred, restaurant review. You'll be judged on the quality of meals, the choice available (instant point deduction for all places with vast menus of 'sorry, no have', especially if you take my order and don't tell me until twenty minutes later, eh Dolce Vita?), service, ambiance (they'll be a lot of places looking that one up), location and a host of other things I'll be adding as I think of them. Name and shame is the name of the game and if you try and deliberately poison me I'll know where to send the boys round to. Of course, golden stars and brownie points will be awarded for a job well done, fine food, good value
(unlucky the French Bistro) and comedy evenings (everyone say hi to Basil at Flowery Twats, oops, sorry, Faulty Towers).
On that note, and blatant threat (it's a fairly safe threat with the number of hit's this blog getsֹ) I'm off to sleep.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Bloody mac!
Well, down in Bangkok and wasting time with this f@@@ing mac. With my Windows laptop I can buy an external hard-drive and have it up an running straightaway and find simple synchronisation shareware to use for backups. Fine, my new 400Gb external drive seemed to mount okay and the backup software started and chugged along (exceedingly slowly) so I decided to go out for dinner (hey, I’m on holiday…)
When I came back an hour or two later after a fine sour & spicy prawn soup and an equally fine prawn and cashew curry (from a street-side food place in ‘little arabia’, amusingly juxtaposed almost diagonally opposite to Nana Plaza, one of Bangkok’s larger ‘entertainment complexes’; veiled ladies in the street and bar-girls about to come on shift flaunting it from the balconies above, wonder what they think of each other) the external drive had vanished from my mac but the backup was still going on. Okay I thought, we’ll just see what happens. An hour later and I have a warning message saying my primary drive is almost full.
It appears that for some reason (power saving setting?) my mac had lost touch with the hard-drive halfway through the backup but then continued to write the backup to a hidden folder on the primary drive. Want to guess how long it took me to find and get rid of that 40Gb pirating my HDD this morning? It had also managed to trash the external drive to the point where it needed reformatting – thankfully I had only copied stuff to it that I have already backed-up onto DVD.
And halfway through the reformatting I get a read/write error and the disk unmounts again. Looking at Seagate’s website they say their disks can go to 60 degrees, I’m sure mine is getting hotter than this with hefty writing so maybe it’s a thermal cutout? So, one more try now to do a big back-up copy to the new drive, lets see what happens…
Another moan. What is the problem with sending mail using the wireless connection I’m on at the mo? I can receive messages but mac mail refuses to send anything saying my sending servers are wrong. No they are not – I know this you stupid @%%%@ of a machine as I was sending mail on the same settings 2 days ago from a Beijing hotel network. Even sending from yahoo’s mail site just seems to make my messages disappear. They certainly aren’t showing in the sent items folder so where the heck are the going? I can’t help but feel this wouldn’t have happened to me on my old PC.
Anyway, it’s raining outside so there’s no point in going anywhere…
When I came back an hour or two later after a fine sour & spicy prawn soup and an equally fine prawn and cashew curry (from a street-side food place in ‘little arabia’, amusingly juxtaposed almost diagonally opposite to Nana Plaza, one of Bangkok’s larger ‘entertainment complexes’; veiled ladies in the street and bar-girls about to come on shift flaunting it from the balconies above, wonder what they think of each other) the external drive had vanished from my mac but the backup was still going on. Okay I thought, we’ll just see what happens. An hour later and I have a warning message saying my primary drive is almost full.
It appears that for some reason (power saving setting?) my mac had lost touch with the hard-drive halfway through the backup but then continued to write the backup to a hidden folder on the primary drive. Want to guess how long it took me to find and get rid of that 40Gb pirating my HDD this morning? It had also managed to trash the external drive to the point where it needed reformatting – thankfully I had only copied stuff to it that I have already backed-up onto DVD.
And halfway through the reformatting I get a read/write error and the disk unmounts again. Looking at Seagate’s website they say their disks can go to 60 degrees, I’m sure mine is getting hotter than this with hefty writing so maybe it’s a thermal cutout? So, one more try now to do a big back-up copy to the new drive, lets see what happens…
Another moan. What is the problem with sending mail using the wireless connection I’m on at the mo? I can receive messages but mac mail refuses to send anything saying my sending servers are wrong. No they are not – I know this you stupid @%%%@ of a machine as I was sending mail on the same settings 2 days ago from a Beijing hotel network. Even sending from yahoo’s mail site just seems to make my messages disappear. They certainly aren’t showing in the sent items folder so where the heck are the going? I can’t help but feel this wouldn’t have happened to me on my old PC.
Anyway, it’s raining outside so there’s no point in going anywhere…
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
News for the last few months...
Well, the summer months are the busy season so no apologies for not posting in a while. A few work trips have taken place including a couple of weeks on the road and a short bit of helicopter work We had a large mining investment conference in UB that also ran a visit to Mongolia’s latest zinc mine. Unfortunately this coincided with the first snows in UB so we got stranded for a night in Baruun-Urt waiting for a plane. I remembered a night a couple of years ago when we got grounded there on a helicopter trip, fortunately I didn’t end up sharing a room with a mega-snorer this time.
A few weeks ago I returned from the second big non-work road trip of the year. 4 ½ days out via the Govi Altai to Olgii in the far northwest of Mongolia, a couple of days at the Kazakh eagle festival out there and then four days back to UB through the north of Mongolia. 3300km, 2200 photos!
Ben and Malcolm joined me for the trip, Ben an old friend from Mid-Wales and Malcolm a retired business man from
Ben also brought me out my new toy, an Apple Powerbook. After getting back from the trip it took me several days to convert from the PC (how do you right click on a one button mouse????) before e-mail, photoshop, dreamweaver etc etc were up and running again. And then disaster, the power adaptor fried itself. If you know
Went out to Terelj at the weekend with an accompanying lady friend. Nice countryside that I had only seen from the chopper before but colours are a bit muted now the trees have all lost their leaves. Did a couple of reasonably large river crossings on tracks that don’t see too much traffic. Amazing that within 50km of UB and it’s million plus people you can get into the wilderness so quickly.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Update to webpage
Hi all,
I'm off tomorrow for another two-week drive around, for work this time so can't tell you where...
Photos from the last road trip around south and central Mongolia are now up on my webpage, though I haven't had the time to add the text and they are in fairly large (up to 900kb) 'flash' slideshows, so sorry to those of you on slower links.
Have a look now at:
http://www.geocities.com/thomaspsant/dispatches/julroadtrip/julroadtrip_dispatch.htm
for a trip map and links to day by day galleries of photos.
T
I'm off tomorrow for another two-week drive around, for work this time so can't tell you where...
Photos from the last road trip around south and central Mongolia are now up on my webpage, though I haven't had the time to add the text and they are in fairly large (up to 900kb) 'flash' slideshows, so sorry to those of you on slower links.
Have a look now at:
http://www.geocities.com/thomaspsant/dispatches/julroadtrip/julroadtrip_dispatch.htm
for a trip map and links to day by day galleries of photos.
T
Friday, July 29, 2005
Rainy Friday Evening
Just about to head out on Friday evening but it just started chucking it down so a few more minutes at the desk…
Not really managed to get much dome with photos from the last trip yet, plugging through them slowly but shooting 10Mb raw files really slows things down – slowly I’m getting to know the batch file capabilities in Nikon Capture software but it’s a bit of a change from dealing with jpegs in Photoshop.
Tried to buy some laptop speakers today and had a typical UB shopping experience. First minor irritation was not having the price written anywhere near anything and then, maybe it’s being a foreigner or maybe it’s standard practice in computer shops here, being told a price in dollars.
Now don’t get me wrong. Even though I like the feel of a quality English tenner there is something specific about using greenbacks in developing countries that lets you know they are, well, still developing. Locals not having faith in their own currency is unfortunately a sure sign that something, somewhere is not right in the system.
Anyway, my standard practice (and the fact I don’t carry dollars on me) when told a price in dollars is to ask for one in tugrug. After a while the spotty youth behind the counter got on his phone and started tapping out a SMS to get the exchange rate. At least that’s what I though, after a few minutes I though maybe otherwise…
At this point the electric had gone off so the chance of anything happening was going down-hill fast. I left, not quite speechless but certainly speaker-less.
Rain has finished now. Time to go.
Cheers
T.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Back in UB... Confluence hunting game...
Been back in UB for the last few days busy at work and trying to find time to deal with 18Gb of raw files from photos taken on the last trip.
In the end I got around 3000 km of Mongolia heading to the far south and then cross-country (is there any other way in this place?) to Bayankhongor in the centre. After that a route was pushed through the Khangai Mountains which was the highlight for scenery but the lowlight when offered a snow leopard pelt by some herders who had recently killed one of these highly endangered animals. After a bit of a break down (half a day wait for a new suspension spring assembly and mechanics from UB) and a brief tourist stop at Mongola's old capital a return to UB was made on the 20th.
When the photos have been sorted they'll probably go up as a written dispatch and maybe a gallery on my main website - watch this space for more details.
Confluence hunting - a great game for those with time on their hands in a big open country...
Basically a confluence is an imaginary point on the earth's surface where a line of latitude and longitude cross. There's been an internet project for the last few years to visit all the confluences on the earth's surface and get a photographic record of what that place is like. You get there, take a photo of the site, photos north, south east and west, one of your GPS and add any others you want to.
On the road-trip I got my first confluence and two more. If you visit the confluence website soon they are the top 3 on the most recently visited list at http://www.confluence.org/index.php
Otherwise you can see them at:
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10861
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10860
and
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10859
They'll give you a feel for what 3 random areas in southern and central Mongoia look like (empty is the main theme...).
T
In the end I got around 3000 km of Mongolia heading to the far south and then cross-country (is there any other way in this place?) to Bayankhongor in the centre. After that a route was pushed through the Khangai Mountains which was the highlight for scenery but the lowlight when offered a snow leopard pelt by some herders who had recently killed one of these highly endangered animals. After a bit of a break down (half a day wait for a new suspension spring assembly and mechanics from UB) and a brief tourist stop at Mongola's old capital a return to UB was made on the 20th.
When the photos have been sorted they'll probably go up as a written dispatch and maybe a gallery on my main website - watch this space for more details.
Confluence hunting - a great game for those with time on their hands in a big open country...
Basically a confluence is an imaginary point on the earth's surface where a line of latitude and longitude cross. There's been an internet project for the last few years to visit all the confluences on the earth's surface and get a photographic record of what that place is like. You get there, take a photo of the site, photos north, south east and west, one of your GPS and add any others you want to.
On the road-trip I got my first confluence and two more. If you visit the confluence website soon they are the top 3 on the most recently visited list at http://www.confluence.org/index.php
Otherwise you can see them at:
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10861
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10860
and
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10859
They'll give you a feel for what 3 random areas in southern and central Mongoia look like (empty is the main theme...).
T
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Kevin and Karen, Kanadians kurrently in Korea
Well that didn't take too long. Kevin and Karen have opted to join me for the trip in June so no more offers please.
Updates of preparation will go up here before the off and watch this space for images from the trip in a few weeks time (if we make it back alive).
T
Updates of preparation will go up here before the off and watch this space for images from the trip in a few weeks time (if we make it back alive).
T
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Mongolia - Dlanzadgad, Naadam, Gobi, Altai. Come along for the ride…
I’ve got one or two seats free during July when I’m driving myself on a photo-tour for 10 days. This is not a commercial trip – I’m looking for someone or two people as travel companions, not as paying tourists.
I’m planning to leave UB by landcruiser on the 9th or 10th July and get to Dalanzadgad for Naadam on the 11th and 12th. I went here 2 years ago and it’s a great place to see Naadam as you can get right up to the action. After Dalanzadgad I’m looking for good places to take photographs (countryside, country-life, wild-life) and as long as it’s somewhere photogenic the route is open to suggestions, but at the moment the plan is to head up to Altai (passing Bayanzag, Khongoryn Els, Yolyn Am, Ikh Bogd and some of the lakes) before returning to UB sometime around the 20th. I work in Mongolia and have driven some of this route a few times in the last year or two so know what to expect.
I’ll be in and out of UB until a day or so before the trip but would like to meet anyone or any two people who are seriously interested in joining me for this trip. I’m thinking of people who are fairly active, fit and healthy so they can stand up to the bumps on the road, nightly wilderness camping and camp food. If you only have 2 weeks in Mongolia then this isn’t for you, but if you’re able to take other trips later, or already have done, then this could be something a bit different. If you came to Mongolia specifically to take photos then we’d be in a similar frame of mind.
If you are interested then drop me an e-mail on trip2005jul@tom-sant.com telling me who you are, what you have done/want to do in Mongolia and what you do and have done in the real world. Let me know any background that may contribute to the trip (specialists in Mongolian history, flora and fauna particularly welcome!). Finally ask any questions you have about the trip and suggest a route after Dalanzadgad if you have one in-mind. I’ll reply to all the relevant e-mails as soon as possible and can meet any likely candidates later next week in UB.
The Upside:
- You get to be driven around Mongolia for almost nothing (we’ll just split the fuel and food costs, fuel will be around 300 to 400 USD total so you pay half if one person or 2/3 if 2 people).
- The vehicle is well maintained and has just done a 2350km Gobi trip as a shake-down with no problems.
- The driver (me) has 10 years of off-road driving experience, the last 3 years spent in Mongolia.
- We’ll be exploring places at a more leisurely pace than the normal tourist jeep trips.
- Photographic advice is free and I’ll probably bring along a laptop for photo downloads and reviews.
- An ipod with 5000 tunes on-board playable through the radio.
- You can jump out anytime though I’d prefer company for the whole trip if we are getting on ok.
The Downside:
- I’m not using a local translator/guide so any interaction with passing nomads will be by sign-language.
- I’m not into staying in local gers and intend to camp each night somewhere photogenic and in the middle of nowhere, or 5-10km away from the big towns.
- This is currently a one vehicle journey. If it does break down it could be a real adventure getting back to UB (I will have a sat-phone, spare water, first-aid etc just in case). VERY interested in hearing from anyone else who would like to tag along in a second vehicle)
- I get the over-riding say in the route and timing (but I’m getting mellower these days).
- You will need your own tent, sleeping mat and sleeping bag.
- An ipod with 5000 tunes on-board playable through the radio.
- I can leave you in the centre of Dalanzadgad, Altai or Bayankhongor if we are not getting on ok.
Friday, June 24, 2005
2350km UB-Bayankhongor-Dalanzadgad-Mandalgovi-UB
Briefly back in UB after a couple of weeks of not showering in the Gobi . I drove out to Bayankhongor to start with, taking about 11 hrs. The first couple of hours from UB the asphalt has so many pot-holes you can’t do much more than 60km/hr, then you get on a couple of hundred km of good black-top until Arvaykheer (410km from UB) where you can roll along at 100km/hr quite nicely. After Arvaykheer the asphalt goes bad again and soon you’re on a mix of field tracks and unsurfaced road-bed, back to 60km/hr if you are lucky. Considering it was the start of June it was amusing to be in a mini blizzard between Arvaykheer and Bayankhongor where the road goes up to around 2000m.
A grey-crane or two, many birds of prey, lots of locals herding animals and a total of five foreign cyclists (cold and struggling in a strong headwind) were passed en-route.
I then spent most my time doing fieldwork somewhere in Bayankhongor province (could tell you but then I’d have to kill you). The cold weather was replaced by warm to hot stuff within a few days. The heat of an unrelenting sun was tamed by persistent winds but at least the wind kept the mosquitos away most of the time.
After work was over I did a mega-drive of around 680km taking 14hrs to cross some of the
After a few days around Manlai I carried on back up to UB. The night before a huge dust-storm had blown in for a few hours. It had a sharp 500m high front of muddy cloud and came in at around 50km/hr. The road from Manlai going north goes over a series of hills and wide shallow valleys and the going was slow for the fires 150km because the storm had left a lot of standing water behind it. As soon as water hits gobi the ground can go treacherously soft and finding a way to thread between the water-holes was quite fun. On the edge of each wet area was a parked up truck with a driver sleeping off the wait for the ground to harden up again.
A few hundred km of dirt later and a power-nap later I reached Mandalgovi, a province centre in Dundgov. It’s a depressing place to drive into from the south as the track goes next to the town’s waste dump. Getting rid of the waste just involves trucking it out into a flat area and dumping it. There are no dozers to push the dumps together, no pit to push waste into and nothing to stop shit blowing all over the local countryside. Against a backdrop of a abandoned hulk of a coal-powered factory it was not the most picturesque sight in the world. I’d flown into Mandalgovi several times before and the thing that always struck me from the air on a sunny day was the several square km of sparkling broken glass reflecting the sunlight from this area of waste.
Someone a year or two ago made the effort of laying a road-bed from Mangalgovi to where the asphalt starts near UB. Unfortunately they never got around to surfacing it and most drivers are again resorting to the field tracks running parallel on either side of the main road due to the number of deep pot-holes and long sections of ‘wash-board’. This was probably the worst section of the whole trip and slowed the day right down to give an average of only 40km/hr for this 475km. I was glad to see the tourist ger-camp (Ondor Dov?) marking the southern end of the asphalt from UB come into sight and let me know the drive was almost over.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
On, and off the road again…
On the way out and back I enjoyed stops in Beijing taking in some favorite temples and hanging out to photograph Wangfujing’s night market - a great introduction to meat-on-a-stick cuisine (roaches, snakes, starfish, water-beetle, scorpion, centipede etc. etc. etc). It’s one of the best evenings out in the city and comes with a full stomach for a cheap price.
So, now back in
The planning is still on for a Mongolian road-trip in July. I’ve decided probably not to take a translator and instead rely on a sat phone for emergency translation use. The route is still open, I’m thinking of taking in Naadam at UB cause I’ll probably be a bit too late ending work to get down to Dalanzadgad for it. Then I’ll have around 10 days in which to drive out somewhere photographic, chill for a day or two, and drive back. Some offers of interest have been received but I may have an extra seat or two if not taking a translator… Be warned – I’ll probably be taking a load of digital video during the trip, maybe even try to get enough stuff to make into a 20 minute video diary of the trip.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Hmm, sitting in UB waiting for photos to print. The pain of a high mega-pixel camera with a decent printer.
Came back from
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Mongolian Photographic Expeditions
This may be of interest to photographers visiting
I’d be interested to hear from people who may be in
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Time out, 2005, mk1.
Wow its hot. Well, relatively speaking. I’m taking a sojourn away from
I’m in that state of not quite being jet-lagged but not yet being totally ‘there’ at the moment. Popping a travel sickness pill on the flight had the desired side effect of sending me to sleep for five of the nine hours in the air and got me into time with western
Web-site updates
If you have come to my blog without visiting my homepage then you won’t have seen a new gallery that has just been added. This one features a selected sequence of photos from my last visit to
The contact page has also been changed. Now you can read an e-mail address hidden in an image and get in touch with me directly rather than using the previous form. If you can’t read the e-mail address the form is still there, and has also been simplified. Using the form and disguising the e-mail address in the image is a way to avoid spam generated by trawling web-bots, not just me being difficult on purpose.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Taxi driver's 14 commandments
OK, not many taxi drivers in
- Should your passenger vomit, or leave any other bodily product in the car, kick him out and clear up the mess before it freezes solid.
- I travel the same route to work every day and know it is exactly 4 kilometres, not 6.
- Start your meter when I get in the car and not before.
- Carrying a passenger does not give you the right to try and get to the front of every queue and overtake every other car on the road.
- If you almost have no gas in your tank then go and fill up before picking up a passenger, especially if you have to add a kilometre to your route to go round a one-way system to the filling station.
- When I’m talking to someone else in the cab then do not turn up your CB or hip-hop music to drown us out.
- Should you tout for fares from the airport your customers are likely to have some baggage – it’s best to empty your boot of the assorted crap you carry and wipe out the remains of the last slaughtered animal you took home.
- If you have to smoke then open your window a little.
- It’s not acceptable to pick up fares when drunk.
- At seven in the evening, after picking up fares all day, you DO have change for a 5000 tug note.
- It is customary for the front seat to be securely attached to the car.
- Do not break off all your inside door handles and replace them with pieces of string or coat-hanger wire.
- Racing your mate in his taxi is best done when I’m not there.
Thanks.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Nazi Taxi
Only in
----------------
A few late nights this last week. Not for the normal reasons I hope you understand, finally the web-site has been coming together as I get my head around some basic java-script behaviours for swapping images (yeah, I know, sad isn’t it). Anyway the stubbed toe is still a nice shade of purple and the start of a cold has put paid to any hope of getting to the gym so there is not much else to do.
The website (follow the link at the top of this page) now has three portfolios up and running. One features the Naadam festival, a Mongolian summer event of the ‘three manly sports’. The second gallery has selected images of a trip I made through
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
2005 - Back to work, new blog...
2005 and a new blog. After a month off to avoid some of the Mongolian winter I'm now back in UB (Ulaanbaatar for the un-initiated). It was minus 39 Celsius at the airport when I came in a couple of weeks ago, it's now slowly starting to warm up (minus 15 to minus 25 these days) and get much lighter - I no longer go to and from work in the dark - nice!
After work I'm slowly trying to rebuild my main web-site after deleting it from the host server and then loosing the whole working folder from my laptop (thanks a lot Dreamweaver). Fitting that in while working 8 till 6, seven days each week, isn't proving to be too fruitful, give me another week and there may actually be some photos up at last.
Late December and most of January was spent in Europe relaxing and playing, so no new photos. A Welsh Christmas, a Scottish New Year, a English road trip with an good friend visiting babies, and then a couple of weeks in Chamonix, France, on the snowboard. As usual, poor off-piste condition for most of the time until just before I left when it started to dump down with snow.
A couple of set-backs during this last week. Firstly my D100, a previously trusty camera, has started having problems with the first shot after power-on. Could be the 25,000 photos in the last 2 years combined with the dust, temperature and vibration of travelling in Mongolia I suppose. Second problem is that last night I think I broke a toe on my fantastically socialist-style 'sofa'. It's made of 3 wooded box-like chair sections joined together with nailed on nylon carpet (yeah, as comfortable as it sounds...) and I now know the central section sticks out half an inch from the other two.
TPS, Ulaanbaatar.
After work I'm slowly trying to rebuild my main web-site after deleting it from the host server and then loosing the whole working folder from my laptop (thanks a lot Dreamweaver). Fitting that in while working 8 till 6, seven days each week, isn't proving to be too fruitful, give me another week and there may actually be some photos up at last.
Late December and most of January was spent in Europe relaxing and playing, so no new photos. A Welsh Christmas, a Scottish New Year, a English road trip with an good friend visiting babies, and then a couple of weeks in Chamonix, France, on the snowboard. As usual, poor off-piste condition for most of the time until just before I left when it started to dump down with snow.
A couple of set-backs during this last week. Firstly my D100, a previously trusty camera, has started having problems with the first shot after power-on. Could be the 25,000 photos in the last 2 years combined with the dust, temperature and vibration of travelling in Mongolia I suppose. Second problem is that last night I think I broke a toe on my fantastically socialist-style 'sofa'. It's made of 3 wooded box-like chair sections joined together with nailed on nylon carpet (yeah, as comfortable as it sounds...) and I now know the central section sticks out half an inch from the other two.
TPS, Ulaanbaatar.
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