WEATHER: Tops 10C – Lows -3C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY : 5 star dinner for $25
BUYS OF THE DAY: Bag of washing done for $4.23, package sent home $12.54
WORD OF THE DAY: - Man how cold do you think it is?
Welcome to Monglia! After disembarking off the train at 1pm in Ulaan Baatar ( also know as UB ) we headed straight to a money exchange so we could grab some local currency, which is called the Tugrug! 1 USD = 1200 tugs…. Yes I am going to leave that well alone. So we aren’t quite millionaires, but for $100 USD I got $120,000.00 tugs!!! I am RICH!!! Woo Hoo. Also a confusing currency as a post card is 349 tugs and an alcoholic drink is 3000 tugs, but I am sure we will get the hang of it just as we board our train for Russia in 3 days time!
UB has a great feel about the place and not what I really expected. The people are well dressesd in a cool and funky way, we could be in any western city with the clothes that they are wearing. Apparently Mongul women love fashion and it shows – not only do they look good, they are beautiful aswell. It is funny what your pre-conceived ideas are and then what the reality actually is of a destination. I love that when a place does that to me ( for the positive ).
Dinner – well when in Mongolia do as the Mongolians do – and yes it is a Mongolian BBQ. If you have been to one before ( in Mongolia or not ) then it is the same set up. You fill your bowl with what vegetables you want, you add in the meat that you want ( normally 6-8 different types to choose ) and then you add in your sauce and you take it to the HUGE BBQ plate they have and the dude cooks it right in front of you with these large cooking sticks. There is just nothing better than meat cooked on a BBQ right? D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. Our final bill for the 6 of us was 123,400 tugs!!! Now how impressive does that look!!! Yep I have kept the bill as proof!!
It is cold here, and I think it is going to be the coldest place I get to on my trip, barr of course Antarctica. I was not able to bring a big fluffy warm jacket and hiking boots – I just don’t have the room, so I am layered up to the hilt, but it seems to be working okay. I look like a mish mash of clothes, but as long as I am warm, then if I don’t look as funky as the Monguls, then too bad. We stand out anyways, there are not a lot of Western people floating around. The temperature last night as we walked home was -8 degrees. Yes MINUS 8!!! UB claims to have 250 sunny days a year, as long as the next 4 of them are sunny, then that will make the cold during the day that much more bearable.
As a land locked country with China and Russia, Mongolia has a population of approx. 3 million people and 1 million of them live in UB. They have made money in the mining industry and are finding that UB is attracting the country young folk and the city is finding it a little hard to keep up with the demand. Traffic is a major issue here. It is quicker to walk most times than sit in the crazy traffic in town. The cars are also another point of conversation, as they import their cars from Korea and Japan there is an even mix of left and right hand drive cars on the roads. It is weird to see a driver on the left side and the car next to him is a right hand drive. You can also see building cranes everywhere and I think in 10 years time the place will look very different to what it looks like now. Progress has it’s casualties.
The Monguls are also partial to a bit of drinking, so there is a Government law that on the first day of each month alcohol cannot be sold or consumed, to try and stem the flow of the drinking. For one day – I wonder how that is working out for them? Needless to say that today is the 1st of April and we went to the poshest restaurant in town for our second dinner, and after asking discreetly about alcoholic beverages, we got served our glasses of wine – but in a coffee cup for disguise and Jesse and Chrissy that ordered a bottle got served theirs out of a teapot. Where there is a will – there is a way!!! Just for the record, for a glass of wine and a main meal at a 5 star restaurant it cost me 30,000 tugs which is like $25! That has to be the bargain of Mongolia so far!
We are off to a Mongolian Ger tomorrow. You know, those round looking homes that the Mongolian’s live in. We have archery and horse riding all tee’d up and a few vodka’s around the Ger fire tomorrow night. I’ll leave you with the words from the official visitors guide, which states – and I quote:
A few fortunate travellers will have the opportunity to discover Mongolia for themselves. To ride the horses of Genghis Khan once trod, to walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs, to sleep in Gers where the Mongul army assembled and to smell the eternally pure wind of the Mongolian steppe.
Now if that doesn’t sound exciting / intriguing to people – what planet do you live on?
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