Sunday, 1st November, 2015
- Day 61/298
- 20%
Korean-made saves the day.
Gear shopping: Camping
Cooking with gas.
Today
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Great shopping tips, from 2005..
Monk motel?
Toto!
Good Luck!
OMG Shop.
Marketing mistranslation.
After lunch, I head back uptown to Amarsanaa Road, my local suburban shopping hub.
I thought that the shopping information at the hostel was useful, until I realised that it was 10 years out of date. Thanks, Latest updated information for travellers 2005. As a result I’m more or less on my own in my quest to procure essential camping gear.
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Keyboard instructions
- Navigate with: LEFT + RIGHT arrows
- Select with: ENTER
- Enlarge with: TAB then ENTER
- Pan with: TAB x2 then LEFT + RIGHT arrows
Cooking with gas.
For a start, I’ve had zero luck with my liquid fuel, so I’m hunting for Primus style gas cartridges.
Disappointingly, there are no high-end camping stores out here. The only gas I can find comes in tall butane canisters, similar to those used in the portable cookers at the hostel.
While these are cheaper than the squat Primus style cartridges, they are unfortunately incompatible with my stove, a Primus Omnifuel. It uses a screw connection and doesn’t support their twist-top design. Apparently you can buy Kovea adapters online, but I can’t see them in any of the brick and mortar shops around here.
However, a small metal burner in a Korean budget store catches my eye. Like an optical illusion from Total Recall, it opens and closes like a mechanical flower. It runs on the ubiquitous butane canisters, so I grab the burner and a 4-pack of gas and cross that one off my list.
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Keyboard instructions
- Navigate with: LEFT + RIGHT arrows
- Select with: ENTER
- Enlarge with: TAB then ENTER
- Pan with: TAB x2 then LEFT + RIGHT arrows
My expanding collection of head torches.
Next up is a head torch.
My USB charged Petzl proved unreliable in Siberia, and my cheap Russian replacement runs on weird stubby batteries.
Tenting without a head torch sucks, but again it’s Korea to the rescue with a Korean Humont E40. It runs on three triple As, which I think will be much easier to get.
Then a vanity item, a small plastic thermometer.
It is intended to capture any impressively low temperatures that occur while I’m sleeping. It looks a bit flimsy for the best/worst case scenario of -50C though!
And a pair of pronged shoe chains, for added grip on the ice. They’re a bit unwieldy, but they seem like a good idea after having slipped and slid my way to the Local Bike Shop.
And finally food.
14 (!) bars of cheap Korean Lotte chocolate should be enough to motivate or barter my way out of an situation.
A can of Salt and Vinegar Pringles is rare as hens’ teeth around here and will satisfy some homesickness.
And a pile of hard-to-find zip lock bags will satisfy my paranoia with things getting wet or disorganised.
Back in town, the shopping spree continues, with the extravagant purchase of a lush and ridiculously bulky Mongolian Camel Hair blanket.
My plan is to stay warm using traditional methods, rather than relying on the hype woven into technical fabrics.
Coming to me courtesy of the Gobi Cashmere House Shop, its two-tone colour scheme and geometric repeating border is a thing of beauty. For the price, it should be!