Good evening, Singapore, and welcome to Sleepless in Singapore. I am Julian, and this is episode number 13. Today is Sunday, the 14th of April 2024, and I should be in Phnom Penh today. So, I have a short public service announcement. Sleepless in Singapore is on YouTube now. That is because Google is discontinuing the Google podcast platform. Like so many products that Google has cancelled, this became one of them, and the alternative they offered is to automatically import the podcast XML to YouTube to a specific channel and thus have your podcast there. So, starting from this week, or technically starting from last week, Sleepless in Singapore is available on both Google Podcast and YouTube, but the Google Podcast version will probably go away in June, if I remember correctly.

Today's episode will continue where last episode stopped, which is somewhere at our arrival with the Trans-Siberian Railways in the city of Irkutsk. We'll move on with the border crossing to Mongolia and then in Mongolia, we'll talk a little about a safari we had in the Mongolian steppe, which was very impressive for us. So please get yourself comfortable, lie down, and let my voice be your guide to a restful night.

Our train arrived in Irkutsk in the morning, and then we had the whole day, but I think we did not even stay there. I have to verify that with Philip, but I cannot find any pictures of a hostel, and I don't really remember sleeping there. So I assume we arrived there, we spent the whole day, and then probably we already left again. Irkutsk was great because we again made another friend, again from Couchsurfing hangouts. Her name was Katya, and Katya, back then, was living in Irkutsk. Not only was she showing us the sights, which I'll tell you in a bit, but also she had the most amazing stories. She's born somewhere in central Russia, and she didn't like it there, and so she started traveling the world. I don't remember all of her stories, but I do remember specifically two or three. One where she was traveling in Nepal and where she went up the Himalaya, up Mount Everest, I think up until the base camp or something. And that story was pretty hilarious because she said, "Look, I don't have any money, I don't have the equipment all the professional hikers and mountaineers have. So I came there with my regular Russian winter jacket and my regular boots and regular everything. And I also didn't have money for people to carry my big backpack. So I carried my backpack myself," and she wasn't like the biggest girl. So I assume her backpack must have been at least half her own size. And she managed to get up all the way to base camp, which is 4,000 and something meters. I don't know. Or 5,000. I don't know she managed all by herself to get up there with all that luggage, and apparently, a lot of professional mountaineers were giving her looks, but then they were also giving her looks again when she was much faster than everyone else, and I thought that made for a nice story.

And then she had this other story where she got lost in a desert alone. Again, I don't get all the details, but apparently, she was crossing a desert on foot alone, like not a giant desert obviously, but big enough to get lost. And she got lost somehow, and she was wandering around for three days, even though it was only planned to be one day. And luckily, finally, with the help of navigating with the sun and I don't know what, she made it out again. And the third story was pretty similar. In South America, she got lost in the jungle because she was looking for a tribe or something living there. I think that time she wasn't alone, there were other people. But they were going through the jungle somewhere in South America, looking for some ancient tribe that does not have a lot of contact with the outside world. And it took them a week or so to actually find them and then somehow also find out again. Very interesting person, very adventurous, maybe for my taste, a little bit too careless sometimes, but very interesting stories anyway.

This girl, Katja, she was there, and she took us for, I believe, breakfast first, and then she took us to Lake Baikal, which was the main attraction and the main reason for anyone to come to Irkutsk. And Lake Baikal was absolutely amazing, stunning nature. The water was so clear. I have never seen anything like it. You could stand there, and you could look down, and like three, four, or five meters down in the water, and you can still see the ground. Not only see the ground, it's perfectly clear. I have never seen water that clear in nature or anywhere. It was really fascinating. And the nature around was fascinating too. We were sitting there for quite a while, taking pictures, and just looking across that part of Lake Baikal, where there was some mountain ridge on the other end. And that was just so magnificent. And the weather was nice. It was relatively cool. We were wearing the biggest jackets we brought. But we took amazing pictures. And we had a great time in nature and with nature. I can highly recommend that. There is nothing much else, but I can highly recommend enjoying the nature. When we were there, that was around, not even around, that was on May 11th, which is pretty much exactly seven years ago today. And obviously, in May, it's not that cold anymore, so Lake Baikal is not frozen, not even partly. You get to see the water and everything. But I also saw pictures and heard stories about Lake Baikal in the winter when it's like really cold. And that must be even more magical because Lake Baikal partly freezes over, and you can walk on it. And the ice from that very clear water is like the bluest ice you can imagine.

After enjoying Lake Baikal and all that nature, we went for a lunch. And at lunch in Irkutsk, which is still Russia, but you know, Asian Russia, I remember for the very first time, we realized just how different people there look and just how Asian people there look. You know for us Westerners, you live in a Western country like Germany in my case, and then you travel to Asia and with a snip of a finger everyone looks very Asian. You go to China, everyone looks Chinese. You go to Korea, everyone looks Korean, and that's just how it is, obviously. But on our trip with the Trans-Siberian Railways, it came very slowly and very gradually, and I guess everywhere where we made a stop, you know, every couple of days in the giant, giant country of Russia, people's appearances changed. The eyes changed, the shape of the face, and the color of the skin change, but it changes very gradually, and then when we were in Irkutsk, we looked at the people, and everyone looked very Mongolian, or to my eye or to our eyes, very much like people from that part of Asia. Very interesting. So we went for lunch, which was dumplings. Also, just like the people, the food changed a bit. And of course, there are like the Russian kind of dumplings, you know, from Moscow. The dumplings in Irkutsk, they were more Asian. And they were delicious.

Then we spent some more time at some market where mostly you could buy dried fish and some snacks, and we had a picnic right at Lake Baikal. I'm looking at a wonderful picture now with Philipp and Sylvia and Paul and Katja. And we bought some kind of meatball again or maybe shashlik. We bought fish, which was interesting. We bought some rice dish, and there's bread, and it looks like some kind of pita bread almost. And yeah, we're sitting there right next to Lake Baikal. Apparently a little bit cold, but enjoying that food. Also enjoying these drinks we never had before or after, and also I cannot really read what it is, but it looks like some kind of lemonade, and that was a very great day, and I think that was also the day where we, at least for a very short time, split up from Sylvia and Paul again. And in the evening when we boarded the train to cross the border over to Mongolia, we immediately met new people. Like right in our compartment, there were Misha and Verena, who were on a trip around the world for many months, and finally, we met them, at least twice after again, both Philip and I, not planned, but by chance because they were in the same places in Asia. And then there was this Dutch guy, whose name I forgot. I'm very sorry, Dutch guy. I liked you. I'm just terrible with names and memories. And the five of us ended up sitting together, spending a lot of time together, talking.

Next day, May the 12th, at the Mongolian border, the Russian-Mongolian border. The Russian-Mongolian border is quite interesting, not because there is a lot to see, actually, there is pretty much nothing to see, but we had to leave the train because they change the complete, like, the wheels and the whole, like, base of the train they change because in Russia they have a different width of the rails than they have in Mongolia, and that took them a while, and the five of us, we used that time to walk around a bit and to see if we can scout what's to do there, but there was pretty much nothing to do, so we just walked around, took some pictures. Actually, that part was interesting, at least because there were many trains, and there are quite some pictures where there was a train stopped, and we could climb in the front of the train and take pictures of the Siberian. It's one of the pictures I put as the cover for this podcast, so you will know when you see it. Or maybe you saw it already, and now you know while I'm talking about it. I'll upload some more pictures to the blog, because after all, there wasn't much to see, but it's still interesting. It looks different there from pretty much all the places I know. Which is true for the Mongolian nature in general.

Anyway, finally, we were allowed to board the train again, and the train went on, and nothing much happened, a little bit more nature, looked pretty much the same everywhere in that part of the world. And so we arrive in Ulaanbaatar, which is the capital city of Mongolia, and the first thing that happens is that we cannot really find a taxi. Then the second thing that happens is we find a restaurant that's called Kudamm, you know, as the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. It was a steakhouse, and also it was closed, but I still remember that was pretty much the first thing we saw of Ulan Bata, and I thought like, "Damn it, why did I come all the way here just to see the same stuff then back home?" But of course, there was much more to see, and also we met our host. I think Katrin, I'm gonna call her Katrin, I think her name was Katrin. We met Katrin, who was our host, couchsurfing host. Her and her boyfriend hosted us in her place in Ulaanbaatar, which was great. She was a, again, not a hundred percent sure, but I think she was a teacher from the US, and she was staying in Ulaanbaatar for a project for a year or two, and everything was paid. I mean, not that it's very expensive there, but everything was paid by the company, and she stayed at a big apartment like four bedrooms. Philip and I, we had two different guest rooms. We could sleep in our own rooms with enough space, and we stayed there initially only for a couple of days in Ulaanbaatar because then we were going to move on with the Trans-Siberian into China, all the way to Beijing. The problem was we did not have any visa to get into China because that was very complicated to acquire before we left because there was like this Silk Road conflict, and China did not hand out any visa to anyone while we were still in Germany, and so we thought, okay, we'll have a couple of days in Ulaanbaatar, so we will just go to the Chinese embassy there. It's a neighboring country, so probably it'll be even easier there than it will be back in Germany. And that's what we did. At least that's what we tried to do. And we went twice. And I don't know if it was because of that Silk Road thing or if it's always like that, but there was like a huge queue, even though we had an appointment, there was a huge queue. We had to wait for two hours in that huge queue, and then we were allowed in, and then I almost got kicked out again because I was looking on my phone, and I was trying to find, I don't know, some paperwork or something. I was looking up something I needed for the visa, and there was immediately a Chinese guy like, "No phones in here, no photos in here, no pictures in here. What are you doing? Show me your phone." and he literally took my phone, made me unlock it, and went through my pictures, and went through my deleted pictures, and not only the last five or so, he looked like at all my pictures in detail, and then finally, I got my phone back, and then finally, it was our time at the counter, and then we applied for that visa, and they told us there is nothing they can do right now, but we have to come back another day, and so we spent a couple more days in Ulaanbaatar, and we came back that other day, and again they couldn't do anything, and we couldn't get the visa, and eventually, Philipp and I talked, and we decided let's not go to China on this trip. A little bit sad, but I'm going to tell you soon, it worked out for the very best. Almost changed my life, you can say. I will tell you all about that later. But fact was, we decided not to go to China. We also talked to Catherine, our host in Ulaanbaatar, and she was able to accommodate us for a couple more days, but obviously, we also didn't want to stay there forever. So Philip and I found an alternative where to go after, but first, we had a couple of days to kill.

And as it turns out, Paul and Sylvia arrived in Ulaanbaatar that day or the day before. And we were meeting them, and we were talking, and they said, "Look, we're in Mongolia. It would be sad to only be in Ulaanbaatar and just to see the city. It's a vast country. We should see a bit of countryside." And so, I don't really know how that even happened. I think most of the organizing was done by Paul and Sylvia or maybe by Philip. Definitely not so much by me. But we ended up hiring a driver and a big car, like some kind of jeep pickup, jeep. And we went out in the desert or in the steppe and the desert. And we did that for five days, five days, five nights, something like that. And again, that was absolutely amazing. Stunning nature, great company, awesome experience, except for the food. The food was a bit of a problem. A) I guess I'm relatively picky, b) all they have in Mongolia outside of the cities is mutton, so we started the first day, we went for lunch, and there was a dish, like an orange plastic tray without any plates or anything, and there was a pile of mutton meat on there. And it's not the kind of, you know, I'm not talking nice lamb rack grills or anything. I'm talking like old mutton, extremely intense taste. And we ate it because, you know, it's kind of the only thing there was, there's basically no veggie or fruit or anything like that, so we had that mutton, and it's fine, I can have mutton once in a while, even though I really don't like it, and then we went on, and then for dinner, it was mutton, and then for breakfast, it was mutton, for lunch, it was mutton, for dinner, it was mutton, and then for breakfast, it was mutton, for lunch, it was mutton, for dinner, it was mutton, for lunch, it was mutton, for dinner, it was mutton, and it was like that every day. Sometimes it was a pile of mutton, sometimes it was mutton soup, which was a pile of mutton in some water. Sometimes it was mutton dumplings, which was the very best options of all of them. But it still, after a while, gets very... Yeah, I think you know where I'm getting at. Not the most exciting food for me to have. One day I tried to tell them I'm vegetarian, so I was hoping to get veggies instead of mutton, but what I did get was the mutton soup, where somebody like fished out the bigger pieces of mutton, and then it was just the same with less nutritional value. So I gave up on that idea too. If you ever go there, bring some, you know, some convenient soup boxes and stuff like that. Other than that, absolutely amazing experience. We slept in tents, in yurts, like the proper old school Mongolians. We were staying at one of the very, very local villages there for a bit. One night we went to bed. It was cold, but not freezing. We went to bed, and everything around us was green. And then we slept, and then I woke up because I was so cold, so I moved closer to that little oven they have in the tent, and then in the morning when we got out of the tent, we knew why it was so cold because there was like half a meter of snow that overnight just appeared very quickly, and then we were just driving around in the steppe, and there were wild horses, and it's exactly like you imagine, just better. I took a picture that looks pretty much exactly like the old Microsoft Windows 95 desktop background, you know, like these rolling hills, the sky was blue, the everything was super far, and there weren't even roads most of the time. There's like maybe a dirt road, or maybe just in the steppe, you can see, okay, this is apparently where sometimes the cars go, but next year, the grass will be grown over it, and then they have to find a new route to wherever they have to go. And sometimes there was not even that. Sometimes we were just going like right into it. No road, no guide, nothing whatsoever. And that went on for hours sometimes. It's not that you like for five minutes go into the green and then you're in the next road. It was going for hours without roads, just straight into the steppe, and there were so many animals, and sometimes they were all around us, and sometimes they were in front of the car. Sometimes the car was chasing some sheep, a lot of sheep there. And even though it was all kind of desert or steppe, it never got boring. Everything looked a little different. I'm very excited about that. It was a very good experience. I would do it again any time, maybe bringing my own food, but I would do it any time again. It was absolutely amazing.

And then after these five days, it was time to say goodbye again to Paul and Sylvia. And we had the chance to again stay, I think, a day or so with Katrin. And she took us out to a very nice restaurant in Mongolia, which made up for all the mutton we had to eat before. They had great steak, great sides. It was very affordable. It was almost kind of like some fine dining, but for very regular prices. Oh, and now I remember another night that was also great of Katrin. They took us to a befriended couple in Mongolia, and they had made or ordered sushi. They were living in a very fancy place. That was a nice night as well. And here I'm just looking at a picture that I actually printed and framed, which is a Mongolian monastery in the background, in the snow, and a priest or monk, I guess, in a red robe walking through the snow. Very cool. And there is another one where Philip, the poor guy, did not feel so well, so he had to use a bathroom quickly. But from my descriptions, maybe you can already judge that there were no bathrooms. So we found this outhouse that I don't even want to describe in detail. But I am very grateful that I did not have to go there. So much nature, so beautiful, so different also on the pictures. One time there was a little like a cliff and a waterfall, and there was a monk we talked to, or two monks we talked to for a minute, and then there were two Mongolian ladies having a picnic or a rest or a stop or something at the waterfall, and they asked us if we can take pictures with them, and Philip and I are sure, why not? And then I remember that one lady got very touchy. He was like, I mean, they were, they were like definitely at least 20 years older than Philip, but I remember one was grabbing him while taking the pictures, one was having her hand on his ass, and it was very touchy with the white guy here. We took very nice pictures of that too. And what I also just see now is the night sky over Mongolia. There is no light pollution whatsoever because there is literally no light anywhere. So if you're lucky and you have this clear sky like we had that night, you can see the Milky Way with your bare eyes. It's a little bit difficult to take pictures of that. While looking at all of that and now that it's coming back, that was definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip. Definitely something I had never done before. It was absolutely the right company. Paul and Sylvia, and Philip and I, we were completely on one wavelength. So that worked out great. And everything was like a whole new experience. And with that, I will hopefully leave you a little excited about what we actually chose for the next stop instead of Beijing, China, which, like I said, was a decision that influenced me many years after, even still. But before we get there, let's do some Tom Sawyer.