I Grew My Boobs in China (44 page)

Bree had gasped and rushed over, swiping the object from his palm. “Oh my gosh, my retainer!! Thank you, thank you. I love you! I would have died without my tooth!” When she’d popped it into her mouth mid-sentence, the man first looked confused and then startled when he realized what he’d just been holding. Nonetheless, he seemed pleased to have made her smile. Literally!

“Put that thing away!” Ammon shuddered before continuing. “Hong Kong has more roads than all of Mongolia put together, and it’s just a small island.”

“That’s not hard to believe! I don’t even remember what paved feels like anymore. What does it even look like? Can somebody please describe it to me?” I went on, exaggerating slightly.

“And did you know Mongolia is the eighteenth largest country in the world? I could never understand why nobody ever mentions it when it’s so big. And I’d seriously wonder, ‘Is it real, or is it just there on the map?’ Well, now I know,” he smirked contentedly.

“You always loved maps. When you were just a little guy, you always marvelled over them,” Mom said, not for the first time.

“Eighteenth doesn’t seem that big, though,” I said.

“But do you know how many countries there are in the world?” Ammon asked, the answer ready on the tip of his tongue, as usual.

Bree, anxious to guess first, as usual, shouted out, “sixty-eight!”

“Ammon, I think I do not know! I did not know this. That it eighteenth biggest was,” said Future, always ready to join the conversation.

“Ummm, I really don’t know. Let’s say, oh, I dunno. I probably only know, like, ten,” I gave up quickly.

“Oh c’mon! You know more than that!” Mom said, a touch annoyed. “You know a lot more than that. You’ve
been
to five already. The U.S., Canada, Mexico, China, Mongolia. You know Russia, ’cause we’re going there next, and Italy and France---”

“And Japan!”
Of course I know more! “
Venezuela, Brazil ...” I thought of every home stay student we had ever had, and before I knew it, I was over twenty-five countries. “Korea, twenty-five; Thailand, twenty-six; Singapore, twenty-seven---”

“And we’re going to India and Nepal, which you should know. And here are two more that I’m sure you forgot: Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. We’re going there after Russia, so you better memorize those,” Ammon said, as we explored the ruins further.

“Okay, so that’s thirty-one. Oh, and the Netherlands, that’s thirty-two.”

“Okay, sixty-eight then!” Bree chose again, even more sure than before.

“No, you’re way off. There are fifty-four countries in Africa alone!”

“What?!” We were both surprised.

“I’m guessing a hundred and two then!” I said.

“You guys are still way off. These are things you should know. There are one hundred and ninety-three countries in the world, give or take a few, depending on whose list you’re going by.”

“How many have you been to already?” Mom asked him.

“Mongolia is the thirty-third country I’ve been to,” he reported proudly.

“Wow, Ammon!” Future gasped as he climbed back into the driver’s seat.

“I can’t even name that many!” I said.
He really does know everything off the top of his head!

“Wow! I want to make it to a hundred,” Bree said, announcing what was clearly a very recently set goal, given she’d guessed there were only sixty-eight countries just moments before.

“And you want to go to ALL of them?!” I asked Ammon.

“That’s the dream,” he smiled.

“You are a loooong way off, my friend” I chortled as I climbed back into the van. I was certain he would be dead and buried long before he got even half of them. I had only been to five so far, and it seemed an entire lifetime had passed.

“NOW I KNOW!!” Future announced, pointing his finger at Ammon and stopping him in his place just as he was about to climb in after Bree. The old ruins of the ancient monastery were beautifully lit behind him, golden in the fading sunlight. Ammon had grown an impressive beard rather than try to shave out here, and his hair was now long enough to curl around his shoulders. He was also tall, of course, and his bone structure was strong and prominent, like that of an ancient Roman.

“I know now who you look like, you. I see him before, this guy. This guy – JESUS!”

“I’m a believer!” Bree shouted out of nowhere.

“You reminded me all this time. Is Jesus. I have this man seen, Jesus, in picture. That is you!! I
knew
I see you before.” He looked very pleased with himself, like he’d just figured out a riddle that had been puzzling him for a long time. And indeed, he had, if only to his own satisfaction. We all turned simultaneously to examine Ammon/Jesus anew.

Ammon stood perplexed for just a moment and then laughed uncontrollably. “Okay then. Now that my cover’s blown, let’s not talk about this here,” Ammon joked, waving back at the once magnificent Buddhist monastery.

Chapter 37

Trust from Dust

Aside from the beetles leaving zipper-like tracks in the singing sands, Khongoriin Els dunes appeared to be completely untouched. Our footprints were gigantic next to the tiny threads the beetles left behind.

“They’re so cute. I just love watching them!” Mom bent over to get a closer look at the shiny black bugs.

“They are incredible,” I said, watching another one skitter along. Checking the bearing of the insect’s path, I wondered where on earth it was headed, and from where it had come. There was absolutely nothing but the endless dunes in every direction. Getting anywhere significantly different from where it was would take much longer than his natural lifespan.

“These sand dunes stretch across 100km (62mi) and are up to 20km (12.4mi) wide. Some of them reach heights of 0.8km (.5mi),” Ammon told us before slipping his guide book back into his baggy, cut-off shorts.

A light breeze blew the golden crumbs uphill like ripples on water. Looking back, I could see that our footprints were already being washed away by the windswept dunes’ ever-changing movements. From this distance, I could just barely make out the camouflaged figures of our camels where we’d left them below. The walk was too strenuous for them.

We climbed until we could climb no more, though Bree and Future somehow found the energy to chase each other playfully.
Some people never grow up!
He tried trapping her but she dodged him like a cat. In his attempts to jump and catch her, his hat flew off his head and rolled away, or perhaps she’d kicked it off his head while hand-springing out of his grasp. He dove down the mountain after it, somersaulting backwards and forwards and surely getting sand in each and every orifice imaginable in the process. Bree stood laughing triumphantly from the top while he and his hat tumbled downwards in a spray of sparkly brown sugar. Future’s legs were swallowed up to his knees when he slid to a stop and waved his rescued hat above his head. I envied their ability to live in the moment like that. They never seemed to worry about dehydration, sun stroke, heat exhaustion, or the simple fact that there was only mutton fat to replace their spent energy. Not for the first time, though, I realized that he was on vacation, too, and having just as much fun as we were, if not more.

Crunching grainy bits between our teeth, we returned to the lower edges of the dunes where we’d left the camels and found a curious hole our two guides had dug. They explained they were letting the camels have a drink and showed us the little pool of mucky water sitting in the bottom.

“But how did they know where they would find water?!” Mom asked, amazed.

“Where ground is cold, this is how you finding. And green, life grows,” Future proclaimed. Barefoot, I felt around and noticed that the ground was surprisingly cold, moist even.
Of course!
Suddenly, it made perfect sense and explained the small patches of green grass which unexpectedly sprouted up only steps away from the edge of the dunes. Getting down into the hole, Future dug deeper until a fair-sized puddle formed around his bare ankles.

“Hey, hey! You know what I was thinking?!” Bree started, “Here’s another way movies can be educational! The cartoon
Dinosaurs
teaches kids how to dig for water. I remember that exact lesson about the cooler ground! Yah, I learned it from that show!!” she finished proudly. It never failed to amaze me how well her memory worked, if only when it came to movies.

“Good for you, dear,” Ammon did an amazingly accurate imitation of how we’d so often heard our grandma encourage us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The camels were lying on their bellies with all four knees buried in the sand. Though I’d not received instructions or read any handy camel-riding manuals, I managed to swing my leg up and over the blanket “saddle” that was fastened between the two humps and had stirrups fashioned from woven rope. My feet came within inches of the ground, unlike Ammon, who was still standing awkwardly on tip-toe with the camel between his legs.

With a blunt command and a smack on the bottom from the weather-worn owner, the camel abruptly straightened its rear legs and catapulted me forward. I clung to anything I could as it practically threw me over the first hump. While he stood there with his bum in the air, I was uncomfortably suspended for a very long few seconds before he leisurely manoeuvred his front legs out from beneath him and stood upright. When the front half rose, I was thrown backwards so rapidly that I again feared I would somersault backwards over the other hump. I barely managed to settle into my “seat” before I realized I was sitting at least six-and-a-half feet off the ground.

“Why are their humps so floppy?!” Bree asked as she rode up beside me. She lifted one in an attempt to make it stay upright, but it persistently fell to the side. “This is not how I imagined it would be!” She was almost devastated by the lifeless lump.

“Me neither. I thought it would be two full, rounded humps like in the cartoons, but these are so long and dangly,” I agreed.

“Do you guys know why they have humps in the first place?” Ammon asked.

“Sure. ’Cause if they weren’t there, we’d fall right off. They’re built-in seatbelts,” Bree joked. Ammon glared at her dismissively.

“Nooooo,” he said, drawing the syllable out in hopes someone else might jump in to answer.

“They’re basically just saggy boobs, aren’t they? You told us this before,” I recalled.

“They’re used for fat storage. That’s how they can last so long out in the desert.”

“That makes sense to me,” Mom chimed in. “The first place you lose weight is always in your boobs.”

“Oh my gosh, Mom! Way too much information,” Ammon recoiled.

“Well, it’s true!” Mom supported her argument by indicating her own as an example, grossing Ammon out even more in the process. He shuddered deeply. I’m sure he was again questioning what he’d gotten himself into by agreeing to go on this trip with three females.

“I thought they stored water,” Bree said.

“ ‘They’ meaning the seatbelts?” he teased. “No, the water thing is a common misconception. But it’s more complicated than that. It has to do with the shape of their red blood cells,” Ammon explained. “The way they’re sagging like this tells us that they don’t have much reserve left.”

“Yah! Judging by their humps, it looks like they’ve been wandering the desert for years. No one has been taking care of them,” Mom pointed out.

“Probably not that long ago, but they can go up to thirty days without a drop of water.” Move below reserves left

“What’s the difference between a one-hump and a two-hump camel?” Mom asked.

“A one-hump camel can’t last as long as a two-hump?” Bree guessed again.

“These are Bactrian camels from Asia. Asian camels are a lot rarer than the one-humpers that come from the Middle East,” Ammon explained.

“Wow, really? I never realized that,” I said.

“So, it’s sorta like the African elephants having big ears and the Indian ones having smaller ears.” Mom loved elephants.

“Why do the guides have to hold the reins? I wanna race!” Bree said loudly. The camels were led by ropes tied to wooden rings dangling from the hole that was pierced through the nose of every camel at a young age. “Why do you get to have the reigns, Future?”

“I is professional. I know camels!” he proclaimed proudly, grabbing my black flip-flop off my foot and using it to smack the camel’s side to show it who was boss.

“I think it’s because nobody ever comes out here to ride them, so they aren’t that tame,” Ammon began. “You see how many herds are just roaming around out here. They probably caught these guys last week---”

As if to prove Ammon’s point, Future’s camel had started to rebel and was twisting its neck around as it attempted to bite his foot. The camel emitted a cacophony of loud, high-pitched growling and snarling noises that echoed across the sand. Flailing his arms, Future pitifully tried to hide from its swinging head behind my small flip-flop, coming just short of losing both it and his fingers to the camel’s teeth.

“Or maybe ’cause they just know we’re stupid tourists and the closest hospital is a week away,” Ammon added when Future’s camel bolted off into the empty desert, the owner hollering after them both. This demonstrated just how undomesticated these camels were, but it also cast doubt on Future’s claims to have expertise with them.

“I don’t want to have this thing run away on me,” I confessed, as I watched Future nearly fly off his ill-tempered beast as the owner continued pursuing them frantically on foot.

The sun was blazing and my face felt like a potato chip without the oil. Future had finally been rescued and was still laughing good-naturedly at himself. Though he and Bree seemed too cool to acknowledge the heat and Ammon was far too tough to allow that the sun could dampen his spirits, the scorching, forty-five-minute return trip was exhausting. To keep our sanity, we joined a mutual game of naming our favourite and most desired cravings.

“Strawberry milkshake with sprinkles,” Bree started.