On the train i shared a cabin with two Mongolians, a man (Dorgvadga Baabatar) and his mother. His mother was one of the most interesting-looking people I've ever seen: broad-faced, light brown eyes, and the bridge her nose was so high, it disappeared into the plane of her forehead- like an Indian chief or Maya warrior. Beautiful, imposing woman.
They didn't speak a word of English, but the man knew a good fifty words in German, so we did what we could to communicate. He had lived in Munich for a year at the Mongolian Embassy, and he was traveling with his mother to Hanoi. How they were going to get on in Vietnam with no English and a few phrases of German, I don't know. I inquired as to what they were going to do there, but his German was too poor to field that one.
I don't know if you know this, but the Mongolian language sounds a great deal like Russian. It doesn't sound Asian in the least. Even the newspaper he was reading and the food packaging they had was written in cyrillic. I had no idea. Fascinating.
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