Let the stupidity begin!

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Classes ended last Thursday, and so the mad rush to do interesting things before leaving the country began. Recently I have been trying to go to a shooting range near the city, since there are things one can do in Mongolia which are hard to do in America. Some of the things I wanted to try were driving a tank, shooting an AK-47 and shooting a rocket propelled grenade.
An internet search had led me to believe the shooting range was located at the Hujir Bulan military camp. I badgered Itgil (the receptionist) until she looked up the number for the military camp and called them.
They were not helpful. The woman who answered said that they didn't give tours or allow people on the shooting range. When asked about the advertisements they had put out she said that while they HAD allowed such things in the past, they certainly no longer did. She did not know why they had stopped, when they had stopped (they were operating as recently as last month) or who had been running the program.
I got the feeling that what she really meant by all this was "I'm not going to get paid for helping you, so I'd really rather be drinking my tea. Bye." This, unfortunately, is a common sentiment among Mongolian government employees.
Further searches turned up two more shooting ranges near the city. I managed to obtain a flier for one of them, which had a map and several phone numbers. Going to Itgil again, I begged her to call them and find out where they were.

She called them.

They had no idea where they were.

Rather, they knew exactly where they were, but they didn't know where they were in relation to anything else. For all practical purposes, this meant that they could not convey their location to us. They explained that any Mongolian would know exactly where they were. Unfortunately, none of the Mongolians who were going with me had the foggiest idea.
I turned to the map on the flier. I stared at it intently. A red line had been drawn from Ulaanbaatar to the camp,with several points on the line marked and distances shown. Oddly enough, the background of the map was out of focus so it was impossible to read anything except for the red line.
I took the map upstairs and got a detailed map of the area around Ulaanbaatar. I tried to compare features and get my bearing on the flier's map. Slowly, I realized that the two maps were not the same. Equally slowly it dawned on me that the faded background features of the map were familiar. It turned out to be a map of Paraguay, which had been helpfully placed behind the red line "road" to convey the impression of "map".
This was infuriatingly un-helpful, since the red line did not (in and of itself) give much useful information. Finally I decided to put my faith in the phone numbers and hire a driver.
Three of us (myself, a Korean student and a Mongolian student) went to a place where drivers gather with their cars, waiting for people to come and hire them. The Mongolian student decided that she was in charge, and that she was going to get us there. This was unfortunate, because she had no idea where we were going.
Unencumbered by this small trifle, she quickly found the number for a shooting range about a day's travel away, and began negotiating with the drivers. The other student and I tried to stop her in English (which she understood), Mongolian (which the Korean student speaks fluently) and all manner of signs, but it took about 15 minutes to steer her from her single minded goal.
When we finally got her to slow down, I showed her the numbers for the place we were actually GOING to, and asked her to get directions from them. She called them. The man who answered said he could give us directions, but he would much rather send someone he knew to pick us up. The driver would be there quickly and would give us a great deal, because they knew each other well.

I'm sure they did.

Against the protests of myself and the Korean student, the Mongolian student called the driver. He said he would be there in 15 minutes, and that he would indeed give us a good deal.
Mongolia runs on island time, which is odd, because it is landlocked. I have learned to double all times that I am given. If someone says they will be there in 15 minutes, it means they will be there in half an hour. If someone says they will be there in an hour, it means two hours.

The driver was late, even by island time. After 30 minutes we called him. He said he was stuck in traffic. "Traffic" is the best thing that ever happened to people who are always late. Before there was traffic people were late and had no excuse. Now that there is traffic people show up an hour late to just about everything and blame that "traffic", even on Sunday mornings when the streets are nearly empty. I would also like to point out that one can easily WALK across the city center in an hour.

After 40 minutes we called the driver again. He claimed to be about two kilometers away (a distance the average person can walk in 20 minutes). We looked out at the street, which was free of traffic.
Twenty minutes later the Korean student and I told the Mongolian student that we were getting another driver. She protested, saying that the first driver would be here any minute. I replied that I hoped he would be, so that he could watch us leave and fume about it.
We hired a guy with a Land Cruiser for about the same price that the first driver (who owned a sedan of some sort) had offered. The Mongolian student called the driver to tell him we had hired someone else. He was furious that we had given up on him after a mere hour, especially since he was just around the corner. We never saw him.

The drive to the shooting range was mostly uneventful, and the scenery was amazing.
The greatest part was coming over the crest of the hills and feeling the world sink beneath you, as if you were dropping down over the rim of a bowl. Exactly like that... only in a Land Cruiser.

The camp was not quite as the brochure had portrayed it, but then again they never are. Two guys came out to meet us. One was dressed in camo, and the other was dressed like a sweaty mechanic.
Still, it was fun. We did manage to do some shooting.



Of course the real reason why I went there was to shoot a rocket propelled grenade, something that one simply can't do in the US. The launcher was old, but since when does that interfere with the plans of stupidity?

Yeah... I looked like a dork, and I couldn't hear a thing for several hours. Earplugs just might have been a good idea. Still, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of my friends that has shot an RPG.

We also got to take pictures on the tank, but at that point no one wanted to drive it.
My ears were still ringing this morning (the day after) but I'm slowly getting my hearing back. Hopefully there's no permanent damage. Something tells me RPG's just aren't supposed to do that when you fire them. I had my mouth open and everything! What more can you do?