Arriving At Erlian / Erenhot & The Dinosaur Museum
We arrived at Erlian / Erenhot at 6.40am & got off the bus in the centre of town, in a totally different place to where we had read the bus would likely drop us off. Unable to speak their language or look at a bus route time table means we were only guided by what we had read on blogs from other travellers who had taken the gypsy bus service. Only a couple of people spoke Chinese on our bus. We heard various different Mongolian dialects, Russian, English & South Korean, these are the languages that are used the most in Mongolia.
When we arrived it was also raining. We started to walk along what we thought was the main road before giving up, hailing a taxi & asking the driver to take us to a hotel. We weren't able to find any websites for booking accommodation in Erlian, which was also something we had read in blogs but we knew we weren't travelling in peak season so there should be plenty of availability. The first hotel had space and we were able to book a big room, with 2 beds, 1 bed for myself & Tom, another bed for Jordan and a pretty big bathroom. It was just for 24 hours, we didn't mind sharing & it reduced the cost. I was showered and in bed by 7.30am where I had another 3 hours sleep. When I woke up on the bus my throat, eyes and nose were congested &nfelt like they were on fire, unsurprisingly as the aircon probably recycles the air from the 31 passengers, a lot of whom were sneezing and coughing. I was prepared for this and took some paracetamol and did a butadiene throat gargle. After my extra hours of sleep I felt much better.
The town of Erenhot, named form the Mongolian's is also called Erlianhaote by the Chinese, which is also shortened to Ereen, or Erlian. Because we caught the bus from the Chinese side in Beijing it was called Erlian. This is very confusing and not the first time we have encountered this in China. Erlian is a town in the Gobi Desert, still technically in China, but also inner Mongolia. It lies just on the border between China & Mongolia.
When researching our border crossing options in Australia, we decided to spend 1 day & 1 night in Erlian to break up the 3 day journey into Mongolia & also to check out the towns dinosaur fossils! It turns out that both Tom & I had a love of dinosaurs as kids and had avidly watched the 'walking with dinosaurs' documentary series. The area around the town and a salt lake to the east called Iren Dabasu are well known by palaeontologists who have discovered a number of different dinosaur and mammal fossils. Erlian houses a very impressive dinosaur museum and around the city various life size dinosaur statues can be seen, 20 minutes outside of town there is a dinosaur Geopark that contains fossils and life size dinosaur figures.
Because of the rain and my impending sickness we decided to just go to the indoor dinosaur museum which was a 30Yuan taxi ride.
We weren't disappointed. The entrance from the Museum was impressive with huge dinosaur figurines, marble steps and huge wooden doors that housed a large dome room. We walked in and the place was totally empty! It was so nice to walk through the museum without any crowds. Inside the dome room they have done a great job of replicating what it would be like to walk with dinosaurs. There is plants, HUGE life like dinosaurs that come alive as you walk past, including a tetradactyl that flies around, realistic dinosaur noises, fossils protected behind glass and information stands. It was very cool, our inner child was deliriously happy to be finally 'walking with dinosaurs'.
After we had spent enough time at the museum we started to walk back to our accommodation, thankfully after only a few minutes a taxi pulled up & we paid 10 Yuan to get back. After we got back to our accommodation we went out to find some dinner & all agreed on a sober, early night in.
- Alli
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