Stuff

4600 cubic inches sounds like a lot in the store, especially when you thought you were going to be taking a bag that was only 3300 cubic inches.   Rodney is taking the 3300 cu. in. bag and I get the heavy, bigger one.  Neither is spacious.  The thing that truly saved us was compression bags.  Seriously, this can not be overstated, we would bringing 40% less stuff without them.  Also, I am down to 3 pairs of shoes for the year (yesterday there were 5).

We are already looking forward to ditching such Mongolia specific items as Clif Bars, peanut M&Ms and "toys for the children".  The food is supposed to be awful (a lot of boiled meat), and apparently, the Mongolian Nomadic children get psyched for Western toys.

After much debate on that front, we ended up going with a ten-pack of Matchbox cars and ten tiny cans of Play Doh.  These were far and away the best (and most economical) choices at Target. 

It's hard to know what's going to be useless when you're going away for this long, and it's hard to know how out of civilization we're going to be.  In Mongolia we will be as far from anything as one can be, but we're going with a tour in a jeep, so we expect they will have any emergency items on hand (we brought our own in case they don't).  From there, we head to Beijing.  I'm guessing as major a city as New York or Tokyo, but in the Chinese countryside???

At this point, I'm just glad that my bag is closed.  Now we just have to shoehorn Rodney's stuff in 3300 cu. in.

Last Meals

I ate a lot of delicious things on the way out of town.   Below is list of places that I hit in our last week in NYC...

D'Espana
Roberta's
Ushiwakamaru
Convivio
Lil' Frankies
Momofuku Ssam
Momofuku Noodle Bar
Brick Lane Curry House
Dos Toros
Hasaki

I would recommend any of those places to you in a heartbeat, but, seriously, the best place I went to was Mile End.  This is sacrilege and I will likely be kicked out of the clubhouse of lifelong New Yorkers, but this Montreal-style deli is producing some of the finest sandwiches around (and some on bagels shipped in Montreal).  I could try to describe the orgy of sandwiches that were consumed, but I think that the accompanying picture says the most.  Just make sure that if you go you order the smoked meat sandwich and the poutine.  Everything else is a bonus.  If they just served the smoked meat and the poutine the place would still be a destination.  So, go.  Now.  Don't wait.  Get on the train and go there.

Also, make it a point to go to Roberta's.  The Morgan stop on the L.  You won't be disappointed, and if you're feeling saucy the 45-day dry aged rib steak special with marrow bone rivals any steak in NY.  I'm usually a pizza purist but here the thing(s) to get are the non-traditional pies.  The Cortes in particular illustrates what you can do with a round of pizza dough if you don't get too wrapped up in tradition.  A serious shout-out to JD and Theresa for introducing us to this place.

Mile End
97A Hoyt St.
Brooklyn, NY

Roberta's
261 Moore Street
Brooklyn, NY

Cameras

I am a complete sucker for cameras.  I really like taking pictures.  I really like reading about them.  Lens specifications are more interesting to me than a great many other things that have far greater consequences.

After a lot of careful consideration and purchases made under the auspices of research, I have decided to bring the following with us to Asian:

Canon SD1000
Canon SD1100
Superheadz Slim Devil 22mm
Digital Foci PhotoSafe
AquaPac Small Camera Case

If you have already experienced more model numbers and camera geekery than you wanted to, I suggest you stop here and wait for the next post.  The geekery continues below...

In the last four years I have owned the following cameras.  Each time I bought one of the digital cameras below, I thought that it was going to replace the SD1000/SD1100 (these are essentially the same camera in 7 & 8MP versions respectively).

Other Digital Cameras:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2
Canon G10
FujiFilm JZ300

In some ways these are all better cameras than the SD1000.  Certainly, the first two have significantly more features and allow for greater control.  The Lumix in particular is a really nice camera, but the interface is not intuitive.

I can not overstate how much I think that Canon has the best digital camera interface.  The photos from the SD1000 and G10 are comparable, but the G10 weighs a lot, has a much larger footprint and is difficult to shoot with one hand.  I would also say that the combination of Exposure Compensation and ISO control make for a decent (though imperfect) substitute for full manual control.  Lastly, at 7/8MP our photos are going to take significantly less time to upload to Flickr/backup online.


The Superheadz is the simplest possible execution (fixed lens, single shutter speed, no batteries, no flash), so I think it will make a good backup.  It's basically an instant camera that allows you to replace the film.  I do like the quality of the lens though.

(You can see examples from all of the above mentioned on my Flickr page.)

Mongolian Tour Companies and Articles

We are traveling with Blue Mongolia, but there are a huge number of companies running tours in Mongolia.  These are some of the others that we looked at...

Black Ibex
Nomadic Expeditions
Happy Camel

Blue Mongolia seemed to strike a good balance between offering a real taste of the local experience and the level of organization and professionalism that we wanted.  Many people apparently just show up in Ulaanbaatar and arrange travel from there.  Definitely a cheaper option, but, from our research, also more hit or miss.  That said, we are fingers crossed on Blue Mongolia.  They have been fantastic in the lead up to our trip, and we anticipate (hope for) a really amazing trip when we arrive.

This is the website to the tourism bureau of Mongolia...

Offical Tourism Website of Mongolia

Here's some good articles that gave us a sense of what this all might be like...

The Mongolia Obsession by Tim Wu (Slate)

Mongolia for Beginners by Marco De Oliveira
 
I don't particularly like the way the second one is written but it did get me excited about traveling there.