Terelj was a great stay overall ...... I think I may have been one of only a handful of guests on many of the days ...... I had comfortably started to view it as my own personal retreat! That all changed on Friday afternoon ....... walking back, after a good long day of scrambling around in the hillsides, communing with goats, cows, horses, millions of grasshoppers, stray dogs, all manner of small rodents, I notice as I got closer to the hotel gates, several police officers, guards or soldiers lined up and the gate locked for the first time since my arrival! Black SUVs lined the front of the hotel ..... was asked for my room key for verification ..... I wondered who was visiting the hotel, and had there been some kind of governmental coup, given the soldiers outside ...... But no, it was Mongolia's Prime Minister Batbold and his cabinet, taking over half the hotel for weekend meetings. They certainly kept to themselves and it did not look good for an opportunity to eavesdrop in on any governmental chit chats, not that I would have understood a word! .... but still, would have been cool! I would see them briefly, attacking their breakfast and off they disappeared for the rest of the day, tucked away in meeting rooms, under guard ... rather a serious group.
The hotel has the most beautifully constructed white pine sauna I have ever been in, bar none. I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur of saunas, as I tend to snoop out one everywhere around the world it seems, being loyal to my roots ..... Finland should hire me as a Sauna Ambassador or something :) ...... So there I am, sweating up a storm in a Harvia, Finnish made sauna, in isolated Mongolia, ladling water on the rocks from yes, a Finnish pine bucket and ladle ....... how surreal!! It gets better yet ........ a Mongolian teenager comes in, speaking flawless English, as in "Wow, you really like it hot in here, aren't you dying of heat?" ...... Holy cow, it had been weeks since I had heard my own language spoken flat out! I was thrilled beyond measure .... strange how you can miss a good conversation after weeks of stunted communication ...... Badma had a delightful accent mix of colloquial American and proper British, a result of having been schooled in an American International School in Ulaanbaatar and in Britain for two years of high school ...... She has a great sense of humor and loved hearing about some of my more humorous observations of her country and people and I, hers! I shared my little bit of hotel gossip and told her that her country's Prime Minister was here for meetings all weekend. She let loose with a belly laugh and said, yes, she knows, as he is her father! ...... apparently she had just arrived a few hours ago with her siblings, mom, aunt et al for a bit of a family reunion for the weekend while her dad was busy with meetings :) A bit of surreal indeed ..... I found out later that her father did not hold the position much longer ..... he was voted out that same weekend, hence all the secrecy, guards etc.!! I think he held the position for a year! Batbold may have wanted to go, as he is rather a successful businessman in UB, from everything I read about him in the newspapers .... Apparently the PM before Batbold was outsted due to allegations of corruption ..... I tend to read the English translated local papers wherever I travel .... getting a pulse on the country, particularly when travelling to far flung places with uncertain politics, is just something I think is a wise thing to do! ...... this attitude of "keeping an eye", originates from a rather personal experience dating back to 1973, when Brian and I were stuck in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the day that Haile Selassie was overthrown! We, along with several diplomats staying at our hotel, had a bit of a job finding a taxi driver willing to drive us to the airport ..... the ransom we all finally paid, probably kept the guy in fine style for a year! The scene at the airport was total chaos .... we were surrounded by the country's military or whoever was in charge of the overthrow .... not exactly held at gunpoint or anything as dramatic as that, but rifles were certainly at the ready, should there be any reason to use them ..... after what seemed like hours, we were finally loaded into the planes .... as it was, both Brian and I sat on the tarmack in separate planes for hours before we were allowed to fly out ..... Brian on to Saudi Arabia and I back to Canada ..... Yes, since that experience, I tend to pay attention to the politics of a country while there ..... plus I just like to read newspapers with my breakfast :)
