Tuesday, 25 March 2008
The Story of the Weeping Camel
If you would like to watch a film which shows exactly what life is like in the Gobi then see this! It really is one of the most beautiful films we have seen, amazing filming and very emotional. Its slow, and the first 20 minutes you wonder if its about anything or if anything will actually happen but we guarantee that by the end you will feel like you have watched one of the best films you have ever seen! It shows what life is like in the Gobi so accutatly, far better than we could ever describe it.. click on our link and order it if you have not seen it, its only 6 pounds!
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Away again..
Hi, just to let you know we are heading out again into the countryside, this time to central Mongolia - Karakorum (the old captial from ghangis time) and an area of volcano craters with lakes in to go trakking and horseriding (whih sarah is forcing me to do!)
In a real hurry, must go now.. Should be back in about 7 days!
Hope everyone is well!
Bye!
In a real hurry, must go now.. Should be back in about 7 days!
Hope everyone is well!
Bye!
Sunday, 16 March 2008
Some pictures are now up....
...to help you all through your Monday morning at work! Its taking ages though, I guess its because we are at the end of the internet line here.. There are some pictures from Ulan Ude, Ulaan Baatar, our first and third days in the Gobi. There is also a gallery of pictures of Mongolian children just for my Mum as I was given strict instructions to make sure I took plenty of pictures of the children...
Off to the Mongolian museum of Intelligence now...
Bye!
Off to the Mongolian museum of Intelligence now...
Bye!
Any ideas what this is?
Let us know what you think... a clue, it is a food and its not honey.
We thought it was honey and sat down to eat it with out bread on the train.
We thought it was honey and sat down to eat it with out bread on the train.
Seven weeks since we left home! Thumbs up!
but still having problems uploading our photos onto flickr... thumbs down
Saturday, 15 March 2008
Alive and well
Hi all, we are both alive and well, still in Mongolia and in the Capital UB. The trip to the Gobi rocked... still in the process of writing it up. Having some problems uploading our pictures on to the net here, not sure why but they should follow soon. Forgot to mention in the previous post that one of the few good things about Ulan Ude was that it had the worlds biggest lenin head. It was very big. Slightly strange and very 1984 to have a huge slightly cross eyed head of Lenin looking out over your towns main square.
Trying to organise another driver to take us to northern and central Mongolia, hoping to get some more people to share the costs. This country is so amazing!
UB is great as well, ugly and dirty but we are enjoying it. Enjoying very much the wide range of food available!
More to follow shortly. Remember the oldest is at the bottom so start there! We don't hate Russia, we just became a little frustrated with the people we had to deal with!
Hope everyone is well and let us know what you think if you are sat there bored at work!
Bayartai!!
Trying to organise another driver to take us to northern and central Mongolia, hoping to get some more people to share the costs. This country is so amazing!
UB is great as well, ugly and dirty but we are enjoying it. Enjoying very much the wide range of food available!
More to follow shortly. Remember the oldest is at the bottom so start there! We don't hate Russia, we just became a little frustrated with the people we had to deal with!
Hope everyone is well and let us know what you think if you are sat there bored at work!
Bayartai!!
26th Feb and a bit more of a moan about Russia!..
Yay, escaping the Russian clutches of Ulan Ude! 7.30am bus, a Korean hand me down with crazy lights inside and thick plastic sheets inside the windows to keep the warm in. Also distorts whats outside so gives you a headache when you try and look out the window. Full bus.
Loo stops involve everyone dashing off to find a quiet spot of the wild countryside.
Russian boarder arrived fairly quickly, hearded off bus with luggage into first customs area to have everything x rayed and fill out pointless customs forms. We had to declare the laptop and fill out forms in double then wait for some butch woman to stamp them in a completely over the top and authortive way. Next we had to cross the big bad passport control. The passport control we were worried about because we
hadn’t registered our visa at any point along our journey. In case you don’t know Russia still thinks its in the middle of the cold war and is still convinced that us English people are all spies and masters of espionage. Yep, according to Russia we are all trying to steal state secrets and if they don’t keep their beady eyes on us then we will run off to the closest nuclear sub to start photographing their crappy missile systems, as a result we are supposed to have a stamp an a piece of paper from the post office in every town we stay three days or longer in. Unfortunately the details for this change depending on who you speak to and they change the rules almost every week so trying to get accurate up to date info is impossible. We were given information which suggested we only had to register if we stayed for longer than three working days in any one town and it was the responsibility of the accommodation owner to register us. This information was relatively new so was unlikely to have filtered down to the low end boarder guards protecting the Mongolian frontier. Sounded easy enough, problem was nobody wanted to register us without a heafty fee and the post office was a mad house so didn’t bother. The internet and guide books were filled with horror stories of large bribes being asked for, or fines all kinds of other crazy things. In preparation for a severe shake down we hid all our dollars, travellers cheques and money in very hard to find or undesirable places and made up a detailed story outlining everywhere we had been – what a coincidence we didn’t stay longer than three days anywhere! We had run through how we claim to be broke and stick to our guns not giving an inch and pretend to be more than happy to be detained by them, just try to be as much of a pain without any gain. More than anything we would keep talking about how the law has changed and you no longer have to register, blame it on the Russian embassy in London… just keep at em. We were prepared…
I (Sarah) was up first, much looking at me, flicking through the passport one way, then the other, asking if I speak Russian in Russian then looking confused when I said no. However it wasn’t long before one guard called another guard and I was off with my baggage into the back offices. After a little while of probably being the butt of the officers jokes, admitting I was a tourist and over and over saying I don’t speak Russian. A large female officer turned up who could speak English who began to question everywhere in Russia I had been and why.
Butch lady – “Why have you not registered anywhere.”
‘because you do not have to register anymore unless you have been somewhere for more than three working days’
‘Where did you get this information’
‘Its just the information we have’
‘You must have registered in every post office this is the law why have you not done this’
‘The Russian embassy told us that it’s the responsibility of hotel owners to register us but only after three days’
‘No this is not true in any way, you have to do this it’s the law’
And on and on it went until finally she relented and told me next time you come to Russia you must register in every town you visit. Do you have a friend with you?
I was finally let out and taken back to the control area where I was given my all important exit stamp, then saw that Sam was having a whole heap of his own problems..
You’d think it would be easier to leave a country than to enter, you’d think that they would be happy to see you leave and to pass the buck onto the next country and wash their hands of you. Not in Russia, not in the land where people take great pride in being pointlessly beaurocratic. Our entry into Russia was unsettlingly easy, someone must have realised because they were going to be a right pain in the ass when we tried to leave (no I wasn’t cavity searched). Sarah was whisked away, I was worried but had faith as we had rehearsed our stories thoroughly, still its funny how a couple of Russians in uniforms can make you nervous… do they really have the power to lock us up… are we being silly or naïve, whats the worst that could happen? Handed over my passport and waited for the guy to flick and look for the registration or lack of. Its difficult to know where to look when someone is staring at you trying to compare you to your photo… do I look down? No that’s a sign of guilt! Up? No that means I’m trying to hide something! I’ll look him in the eyes…. Ok its been 5 seconds now… don’t want to be accused of trying to stare him down.. ahhhh stop looking guilty! So this went on for ages, then they notice the problems on the back of the photo and called other people over. (there are only two customs desks at this boarder post so the rest of the bus are still queuing behind me) Boarder man two barked at me then started to peel my picture back, peeling it well beyond the point it had been peeled before and in 5 seconds doubling the damage. I shouted at him, told him that he was making it worse etc etc. Anyway they decide to inspect it by peeling it back further despite my protests, its now almost a third off. The two of them decide to get help from a higher authority, the only problem now is that the arseholes have peeled the picture back so much more it actually does look bad and the goon that comes down wont accept that it was his employees that caused the damage. This went on for ages, held the bus us for over an hour as they couldn’t let it go without us or a decision on what was happening to us. After going round and round in circles I was finally given a da instead of nyet and could jump on the bus, forward another 50 meters another Russian on board to check to make sure everyone had been checked twice, through a wire gate over no mans land, through another crappy gate then get ready to start the whole process all over again! Same problems, only this time Ivan and his buddies have made my job ten times harder… the guard called his boss who called his boss who luckily started to chuckle when I blamed it all on the Russians. Eventually after the woman who could speak a tiny bit of English told us to never come back to Mongolia again (we presume she meant with this passport!) we were let in! Again we had held the bus up for another hour, but it seemed the other passengers who were mainly Mongolian or Byriat were more concerned for us rather than annoyed (we were the only foreigners on the bus and it must have just looked like they were giving us extra crap for being foreign).
I can almost hear my Dad say I told you so, he suggested a number of times that I should get a new passport before I left, I was so determined to fill it up fully with stamps so didn’t. After arriving in UB we went to the British Embassy to check out how to get a new one.. the good news is that it is possible.. the bad news is that it takes 21 days (like everything else these days it would apparently be made in China!) which would mean overstaying the mongel visa, something we cannot really do. They can put an express recommendation through but Mongolia only receives a Queens post once every two weeks so its not going to help, it will have to be Beijing. So…. Once more, Mongolia into China, I hope all goes well, we are debating using a quick squige of prit stick or uhu but we are unsure if this will show up under a uv light (which they use to check very carefully..) The glue may stop them noticing, but if they do notice and spot the glue then things may look worse… We are not really sure what would happen if the Chinese turned us away as we would have already been stamped out of Mongolia so could not go back, we would be stuck between the two countries a bit like Tom Hanks in the terminal living on the little stretch of land between inner and outer Mongolia!
After crossing the boarder with Russia we drove for hours and hours without seeing any other towns, villages or cars, it really was a drive through nothing for 7 hours. Considering it was the main road between Mongolia and Russia there was no other traffic and only about 50% of the tarmac remained. The landscape consisted of gentle rolling hills and very wide flat valleys, everything seemed bone dry with little or no vegetation. If you could image the hills of North Wales stretched out in all directions with big gaps between them you’d be half way there. We would drive along a flat valley for 2 hours, rise at the end then over a pass into the next, over and over. All of a sudden, without warning after seeing absolutely nothing since the boarder we saw the sprawl of Ulaan Baatar ahead of us. Sarah and I laughed that in the future when people mention that Las Vegas is in the middle of nowhere we are going to bore stupid then and tell them ‘you should see UB’ The city is situated between four large rocky snow covered holy mountains which provide in impressive backdrop (and probably helps trap the dirty air). Most cities have their impressive tall landmark building, UB has its three huge smokestacks pumping out pollution from their three large thermal power stations something that would make Greenpeace wet their pants.
The capitol itself is a young city, first recorded in 1639 near a large monastery not far from its current location. As the city was made up of gers when the grasslands dried they just packed everything and moved the city to fresh pastures! Apparently in the early days the city was moved over 25 times, and given some very boring names such as camp, great camp and city of gers. When the Mongolians first claimed their independence from China (who had invaded and occupied since the late 17th century) they named the city the even more exciting name of capitol camp, the Chinese put an end to this craziness and invaded again, followed by the Russians and their communist revolution. It was the creative Russians who decided to call the city Ulaan Baatar which translates to….. ‘Red Hero!’
Nomadic lifestyles and building buildings don’t exactly go hand in hand so UB isn’t somewhere with lots of old buildings. The only real permanent buildings built were the monasteries but unfortunately the Russians destroyed virtually all of them in the (not so) great purges of the 1930’s. During this time almost all of Mongolia’s 700 temples were destroyed and some 17000 monks packed off never to be seen again, two sites were spared and used by the Soviets as a museum and showcase temple to prove religious freedom to visiting diplomats.. Since the collapse of the USSR and Mongolian independence religious freedom has been granted and some sites have been rebuilt, with this Buddhism seems to be flourishing again now. Anyway, back to the buildings… with most of the temples destroyed the Russians did what they do best and planned the city in a big council estate way providing enough demand for concrete and steel so their factories met their targets. Most buildings in UB are of Russian decent, the centre and the accommodation blocks all over but it doesn’t look too bad. The streets are wide with trees (a little dead looking) and the city was build with plenty of parks and squares so you can always find some open space if you need some. Since 1990 and the opening up of Mongolia’s economy plenty of new modern buildings have been built, often with a Mongolian twist which is nice. As it is winter at the moment all building is put on hold but walking around you see many new jobs on the go, we both feel if you came back in three years its going to look very different, there is even a huge Hilton being built.
One thing that Mongolians have managed to grasp which Russians have not is that if you own a business and you want it to be popular then you need to have a sign outside telling people what you do! It sounds crazy but many Russian shops or businesses are behind closed doors with absolutely nothing telling you whats inside, its not that we couldn’t read the writing, there was nothing there at all it feels like the workers like that because then there is less chance of them being bothered! UB rocks because if you want a bank you can find it, restaurant easy, internet café.. over there, perfect.
Instantly, despite UB having the reputation of being the mutton capital in the Mongolian mutton empire the food here is infinitely better than the food ever was in Russia. Russian cooking has two (more than likely many many more but this is what sticks with us) major problems…. Both of them seem to stem from genetic defects within Russian people themselves.. Number one is that Russian people seem to be completely afraid/scared/allergic or just not aware of vegetables. At first we thought ahh… this is all because the Russians are in the middle of nowhere and they cannot get the veg, but no! Coming to Mongolia has disproved that, we have a complete varity of all kinds of fruit and veg here and it is used a lot. In one restaurant in Russia the woman was asking which sides we wanted… we asked if they has any vegetable sides and the woman just laughed in our face like we had said something really funny, no Russian people don’t eat veg. We had fries and home cooked potatoes. What where the home cooked fries you ask?... time for point number two.
Russians have a complete infactuation with the herb dill. When we were first told about this in Moscow we thought it was quite funny and decided this would not bother us as we both like the herb… oh how this would change. Almost all the food we ordered came not just with a light sprinkling of dill but with handfuls dumped all over. Not only this, but all products contained dill - the pot noodles had dill in, the instant mash was flecked with dill, not cheese and chive crisps but cheese and dill, the cheese had dill in, it was everywhere! One buffet breakfast we ate at even had whole sprigs of dill with the tomato and cucumber and the Russians were picking it up and eating it whole on its own, they were loving it, it was like frickin cat nip for Russians. Anyway, the home cooked potatoes turned out to be fries but covered in huge amounts of dill which made us laugh.
Overall we were happy to arrive in UB. The guesthouse we found was central and although a little cramped, nice. The owner is Korean and a happy smiley chappy who has been very helpful to us.
Our first day in UB we spend walking about and getting used to our new surroundings, the centre of the city is small and most things are located on one of a couple of roads not far from where we are staying. We visited ‘Gandantegchinlen Khiid’ which roughly means ‘the great place of complete joy’ and is Mongolia’s largest temple. It was built in 1838 and was used up until the purges of the 30’s when it became a ‘show temple’ for foreign visitors up until 1990. The site was made up of a number of temples built around a courtyard which was a pleasant place to sit and people watch, you could also buy bird feed and feed the thousands of flying rats which were plaguing the area. Inside the main temple was a huge standing gold Buddha about 5 floors high surrounded by prayer wheels, the locals que up to walk around the statue and spin the wheels. The inside has a very spiritual feel with the sound of the chanting and the smell of the burning incense.
From here we walked past the museum of hunting, an old run down building which had seen better days, a long time ago. We had to find the cleaner of the nearby bar to fetch the keys and lead us upstairs, unlock the doors and turn on the lights. She then led us round the museum which was really just a couple of rooms of stuffed animals, mounted heads and endangered species pelts, with each new animal she would keep pronouncing the name in Mongolian until we repeated after her.
A short walk from here was the Mongolian natural history museum which despite the clear lack of funds it was a good effort and was very enjoyable. There was a great dinosaur section, with one apparently famous fossil of a velocirapter and protocerotops that were buried alive whilst in the midst of mortal combat 80 million years ago, quite amazing. Many dinosaur eggs and multiple woolly rhinos which they seemed to use as a space filler when they had nothing else to show. There was a large camel section, a room dedicated to the reintroduction of the worlds only remaining wild horses – the takhi, a geology section and more stuffed animals than you could possibly imagine. Another great room was dedicated to three famous Mongolians, each one had a wall display all about him.. there was the first Mongolian in the Cosmos, the first Mongolian in the Antarctic and the first Mongolian in the Everest (sic).
After the discovery of the Taj Mahal our first main meal in Mongolia was a red hot curry.. beautiful.
Loo stops involve everyone dashing off to find a quiet spot of the wild countryside.
Russian boarder arrived fairly quickly, hearded off bus with luggage into first customs area to have everything x rayed and fill out pointless customs forms. We had to declare the laptop and fill out forms in double then wait for some butch woman to stamp them in a completely over the top and authortive way. Next we had to cross the big bad passport control. The passport control we were worried about because we
hadn’t registered our visa at any point along our journey. In case you don’t know Russia still thinks its in the middle of the cold war and is still convinced that us English people are all spies and masters of espionage. Yep, according to Russia we are all trying to steal state secrets and if they don’t keep their beady eyes on us then we will run off to the closest nuclear sub to start photographing their crappy missile systems, as a result we are supposed to have a stamp an a piece of paper from the post office in every town we stay three days or longer in. Unfortunately the details for this change depending on who you speak to and they change the rules almost every week so trying to get accurate up to date info is impossible. We were given information which suggested we only had to register if we stayed for longer than three working days in any one town and it was the responsibility of the accommodation owner to register us. This information was relatively new so was unlikely to have filtered down to the low end boarder guards protecting the Mongolian frontier. Sounded easy enough, problem was nobody wanted to register us without a heafty fee and the post office was a mad house so didn’t bother. The internet and guide books were filled with horror stories of large bribes being asked for, or fines all kinds of other crazy things. In preparation for a severe shake down we hid all our dollars, travellers cheques and money in very hard to find or undesirable places and made up a detailed story outlining everywhere we had been – what a coincidence we didn’t stay longer than three days anywhere! We had run through how we claim to be broke and stick to our guns not giving an inch and pretend to be more than happy to be detained by them, just try to be as much of a pain without any gain. More than anything we would keep talking about how the law has changed and you no longer have to register, blame it on the Russian embassy in London… just keep at em. We were prepared…
I (Sarah) was up first, much looking at me, flicking through the passport one way, then the other, asking if I speak Russian in Russian then looking confused when I said no. However it wasn’t long before one guard called another guard and I was off with my baggage into the back offices. After a little while of probably being the butt of the officers jokes, admitting I was a tourist and over and over saying I don’t speak Russian. A large female officer turned up who could speak English who began to question everywhere in Russia I had been and why.
Butch lady – “Why have you not registered anywhere.”
‘because you do not have to register anymore unless you have been somewhere for more than three working days’
‘Where did you get this information’
‘Its just the information we have’
‘You must have registered in every post office this is the law why have you not done this’
‘The Russian embassy told us that it’s the responsibility of hotel owners to register us but only after three days’
‘No this is not true in any way, you have to do this it’s the law’
And on and on it went until finally she relented and told me next time you come to Russia you must register in every town you visit. Do you have a friend with you?
I was finally let out and taken back to the control area where I was given my all important exit stamp, then saw that Sam was having a whole heap of his own problems..
You’d think it would be easier to leave a country than to enter, you’d think that they would be happy to see you leave and to pass the buck onto the next country and wash their hands of you. Not in Russia, not in the land where people take great pride in being pointlessly beaurocratic. Our entry into Russia was unsettlingly easy, someone must have realised because they were going to be a right pain in the ass when we tried to leave (no I wasn’t cavity searched). Sarah was whisked away, I was worried but had faith as we had rehearsed our stories thoroughly, still its funny how a couple of Russians in uniforms can make you nervous… do they really have the power to lock us up… are we being silly or naïve, whats the worst that could happen? Handed over my passport and waited for the guy to flick and look for the registration or lack of. Its difficult to know where to look when someone is staring at you trying to compare you to your photo… do I look down? No that’s a sign of guilt! Up? No that means I’m trying to hide something! I’ll look him in the eyes…. Ok its been 5 seconds now… don’t want to be accused of trying to stare him down.. ahhhh stop looking guilty! So this went on for ages, then they notice the problems on the back of the photo and called other people over. (there are only two customs desks at this boarder post so the rest of the bus are still queuing behind me) Boarder man two barked at me then started to peel my picture back, peeling it well beyond the point it had been peeled before and in 5 seconds doubling the damage. I shouted at him, told him that he was making it worse etc etc. Anyway they decide to inspect it by peeling it back further despite my protests, its now almost a third off. The two of them decide to get help from a higher authority, the only problem now is that the arseholes have peeled the picture back so much more it actually does look bad and the goon that comes down wont accept that it was his employees that caused the damage. This went on for ages, held the bus us for over an hour as they couldn’t let it go without us or a decision on what was happening to us. After going round and round in circles I was finally given a da instead of nyet and could jump on the bus, forward another 50 meters another Russian on board to check to make sure everyone had been checked twice, through a wire gate over no mans land, through another crappy gate then get ready to start the whole process all over again! Same problems, only this time Ivan and his buddies have made my job ten times harder… the guard called his boss who called his boss who luckily started to chuckle when I blamed it all on the Russians. Eventually after the woman who could speak a tiny bit of English told us to never come back to Mongolia again (we presume she meant with this passport!) we were let in! Again we had held the bus up for another hour, but it seemed the other passengers who were mainly Mongolian or Byriat were more concerned for us rather than annoyed (we were the only foreigners on the bus and it must have just looked like they were giving us extra crap for being foreign).
I can almost hear my Dad say I told you so, he suggested a number of times that I should get a new passport before I left, I was so determined to fill it up fully with stamps so didn’t. After arriving in UB we went to the British Embassy to check out how to get a new one.. the good news is that it is possible.. the bad news is that it takes 21 days (like everything else these days it would apparently be made in China!) which would mean overstaying the mongel visa, something we cannot really do. They can put an express recommendation through but Mongolia only receives a Queens post once every two weeks so its not going to help, it will have to be Beijing. So…. Once more, Mongolia into China, I hope all goes well, we are debating using a quick squige of prit stick or uhu but we are unsure if this will show up under a uv light (which they use to check very carefully..) The glue may stop them noticing, but if they do notice and spot the glue then things may look worse… We are not really sure what would happen if the Chinese turned us away as we would have already been stamped out of Mongolia so could not go back, we would be stuck between the two countries a bit like Tom Hanks in the terminal living on the little stretch of land between inner and outer Mongolia!
After crossing the boarder with Russia we drove for hours and hours without seeing any other towns, villages or cars, it really was a drive through nothing for 7 hours. Considering it was the main road between Mongolia and Russia there was no other traffic and only about 50% of the tarmac remained. The landscape consisted of gentle rolling hills and very wide flat valleys, everything seemed bone dry with little or no vegetation. If you could image the hills of North Wales stretched out in all directions with big gaps between them you’d be half way there. We would drive along a flat valley for 2 hours, rise at the end then over a pass into the next, over and over. All of a sudden, without warning after seeing absolutely nothing since the boarder we saw the sprawl of Ulaan Baatar ahead of us. Sarah and I laughed that in the future when people mention that Las Vegas is in the middle of nowhere we are going to bore stupid then and tell them ‘you should see UB’ The city is situated between four large rocky snow covered holy mountains which provide in impressive backdrop (and probably helps trap the dirty air). Most cities have their impressive tall landmark building, UB has its three huge smokestacks pumping out pollution from their three large thermal power stations something that would make Greenpeace wet their pants.
The capitol itself is a young city, first recorded in 1639 near a large monastery not far from its current location. As the city was made up of gers when the grasslands dried they just packed everything and moved the city to fresh pastures! Apparently in the early days the city was moved over 25 times, and given some very boring names such as camp, great camp and city of gers. When the Mongolians first claimed their independence from China (who had invaded and occupied since the late 17th century) they named the city the even more exciting name of capitol camp, the Chinese put an end to this craziness and invaded again, followed by the Russians and their communist revolution. It was the creative Russians who decided to call the city Ulaan Baatar which translates to….. ‘Red Hero!’
Nomadic lifestyles and building buildings don’t exactly go hand in hand so UB isn’t somewhere with lots of old buildings. The only real permanent buildings built were the monasteries but unfortunately the Russians destroyed virtually all of them in the (not so) great purges of the 1930’s. During this time almost all of Mongolia’s 700 temples were destroyed and some 17000 monks packed off never to be seen again, two sites were spared and used by the Soviets as a museum and showcase temple to prove religious freedom to visiting diplomats.. Since the collapse of the USSR and Mongolian independence religious freedom has been granted and some sites have been rebuilt, with this Buddhism seems to be flourishing again now. Anyway, back to the buildings… with most of the temples destroyed the Russians did what they do best and planned the city in a big council estate way providing enough demand for concrete and steel so their factories met their targets. Most buildings in UB are of Russian decent, the centre and the accommodation blocks all over but it doesn’t look too bad. The streets are wide with trees (a little dead looking) and the city was build with plenty of parks and squares so you can always find some open space if you need some. Since 1990 and the opening up of Mongolia’s economy plenty of new modern buildings have been built, often with a Mongolian twist which is nice. As it is winter at the moment all building is put on hold but walking around you see many new jobs on the go, we both feel if you came back in three years its going to look very different, there is even a huge Hilton being built.
One thing that Mongolians have managed to grasp which Russians have not is that if you own a business and you want it to be popular then you need to have a sign outside telling people what you do! It sounds crazy but many Russian shops or businesses are behind closed doors with absolutely nothing telling you whats inside, its not that we couldn’t read the writing, there was nothing there at all it feels like the workers like that because then there is less chance of them being bothered! UB rocks because if you want a bank you can find it, restaurant easy, internet café.. over there, perfect.
Instantly, despite UB having the reputation of being the mutton capital in the Mongolian mutton empire the food here is infinitely better than the food ever was in Russia. Russian cooking has two (more than likely many many more but this is what sticks with us) major problems…. Both of them seem to stem from genetic defects within Russian people themselves.. Number one is that Russian people seem to be completely afraid/scared/allergic or just not aware of vegetables. At first we thought ahh… this is all because the Russians are in the middle of nowhere and they cannot get the veg, but no! Coming to Mongolia has disproved that, we have a complete varity of all kinds of fruit and veg here and it is used a lot. In one restaurant in Russia the woman was asking which sides we wanted… we asked if they has any vegetable sides and the woman just laughed in our face like we had said something really funny, no Russian people don’t eat veg. We had fries and home cooked potatoes. What where the home cooked fries you ask?... time for point number two.
Russians have a complete infactuation with the herb dill. When we were first told about this in Moscow we thought it was quite funny and decided this would not bother us as we both like the herb… oh how this would change. Almost all the food we ordered came not just with a light sprinkling of dill but with handfuls dumped all over. Not only this, but all products contained dill - the pot noodles had dill in, the instant mash was flecked with dill, not cheese and chive crisps but cheese and dill, the cheese had dill in, it was everywhere! One buffet breakfast we ate at even had whole sprigs of dill with the tomato and cucumber and the Russians were picking it up and eating it whole on its own, they were loving it, it was like frickin cat nip for Russians. Anyway, the home cooked potatoes turned out to be fries but covered in huge amounts of dill which made us laugh.
Overall we were happy to arrive in UB. The guesthouse we found was central and although a little cramped, nice. The owner is Korean and a happy smiley chappy who has been very helpful to us.
Our first day in UB we spend walking about and getting used to our new surroundings, the centre of the city is small and most things are located on one of a couple of roads not far from where we are staying. We visited ‘Gandantegchinlen Khiid’ which roughly means ‘the great place of complete joy’ and is Mongolia’s largest temple. It was built in 1838 and was used up until the purges of the 30’s when it became a ‘show temple’ for foreign visitors up until 1990. The site was made up of a number of temples built around a courtyard which was a pleasant place to sit and people watch, you could also buy bird feed and feed the thousands of flying rats which were plaguing the area. Inside the main temple was a huge standing gold Buddha about 5 floors high surrounded by prayer wheels, the locals que up to walk around the statue and spin the wheels. The inside has a very spiritual feel with the sound of the chanting and the smell of the burning incense.
From here we walked past the museum of hunting, an old run down building which had seen better days, a long time ago. We had to find the cleaner of the nearby bar to fetch the keys and lead us upstairs, unlock the doors and turn on the lights. She then led us round the museum which was really just a couple of rooms of stuffed animals, mounted heads and endangered species pelts, with each new animal she would keep pronouncing the name in Mongolian until we repeated after her.
A short walk from here was the Mongolian natural history museum which despite the clear lack of funds it was a good effort and was very enjoyable. There was a great dinosaur section, with one apparently famous fossil of a velocirapter and protocerotops that were buried alive whilst in the midst of mortal combat 80 million years ago, quite amazing. Many dinosaur eggs and multiple woolly rhinos which they seemed to use as a space filler when they had nothing else to show. There was a large camel section, a room dedicated to the reintroduction of the worlds only remaining wild horses – the takhi, a geology section and more stuffed animals than you could possibly imagine. Another great room was dedicated to three famous Mongolians, each one had a wall display all about him.. there was the first Mongolian in the Cosmos, the first Mongolian in the Antarctic and the first Mongolian in the Everest (sic).
After the discovery of the Taj Mahal our first main meal in Mongolia was a red hot curry.. beautiful.
Bit of a moan about Russia...
Our last week in Russia was unfortunately a bit of a let down and an anti climax as we ended up imprisoning ourselves in Ulan Ude, a Siberian town not too far from the boarder with Mongolia. The town was pleasant enough but was small and didn’t have much going on, the few museums that were supposed to be there we couldn’t find and no one was willing to help us. The main problem was that despite the extra Asian faces and slight Asian feel it was still very Russian, something that by this point had started to annoy us a little… we were getting sick of people being rude and the difficulty of having to make anyone do their job!
The hotel we were staying in was terrible, £35 a night for a crappy single room with an exceptionally uncomfortable bed booby trapped with sharp wood so only one person could attempt to sleep and then only if they lay in the middle at attempted no sideways movements. I (Sam) slept on the floor for the week, Sarah had the bum deal with the torture bed, man those Russians are evil. We didn’t really find anywhere worthwhile to eat without spending a fortune so survived most of the week on instant noodles and mashed potato with tinned fruit for pudding.. not much else you can make with only a kettle… and to use the kettle you had to go poke the dragon at the end of the corridor and expect a torrent of abuse for making her work (no joke).
Everything about the hotel was such a hassle. After paying for two nights in advance we were given a shitty bit of toilet paper about the size of a credit card with the dates we had paid for circled. We had to take this piece of paper up to the woman on our floor to collect our key, something we were used to, listen to her sigh and tut and generally flap about for a minute or two before she would thrust it into our hand. Every time we went out we would have to find her to swap our key for the same crappy small bit of paper, it would always take five minutes or so to find her which was a pain, but every time we tried to leave with the key she would be there and yell at us until we gave it to her. We had to use this same piece of paper every time we wanted to leave or enter the hotel over the course of the week so it became more and more scrappy.
Its kind of hard to explain the mentality of the people we dealt with in Russia without it sounding like we must have done something wrong or that we are exaggerating We were only there for three weeks and overall we enjoyed our time there, but unfortunately the overriding memory which will stick in our minds about Russia was the shear blatant rudeness of the people we met or had to deal with. Whilst we understand that all those years of communism wasn’t great for creating a customer service culture the reception we commonly received was just awful. It seems that in Russia nobody wants to do their job, fair enough we all feel like that sometimes, so they just take it out on each other by being miserable, not smiling, swearing and shouting or just ignoring each other. There cannot be many countries in the world where you can walk into a hotel reception and stand for ten minutes whilst the receptionist is clearly pretending your not there… it sounds funny and it was for a while, she will just be looking at the computer and no matter how many times we say hello she will not turn to you until she’s ready.
Sarah and I spent a year trying to learn Russian and knew enough to have a basic conversation, ask directions, book a room etc, an effort which would be appreciated in every other country I can think of except Russia. Nope, not Russia, this seemed to get on their nerves more as we couldn’t speak it properly. It was common for people we had asked a question (train staff, hotel staff, ticket ladies) to just shout or unleash a torrent of loud Russian (often causing raised eyebrows amongst bystanders), the word foreigner was heard many times.
Ok, so lots of rambling heres a few examples…
Hotel receptionist Kungur. Wanted to charge us 500 roubles more than the printed rate for the room… when asked why she just faced her computer and completely ignored anything we said regardless of language until we put the money on the table. Cow.
Bin lady in the hotel Ulan Ude. This lady hadn’t once been in to clean our room all week.. on day 4 she came in to empty the bin, we had been nice and put the rubbish in bags all lined up but oh my, how much did she want to tut and sign and moan and go on about it!? It was like a Monty python sketch. We just laughed at her.
Café Listvynenka. Waited about 15 mins to order 2 cups of tea, when the waitress came and we asked she stood there and did the best impression of Harry Enfield we’ve ever seen, shrugging of the shoulders and tuting and sighing, the whole works, think am I bovered. We laughed in her face and told her to smile.
Train stations we were always shouted at.
We could go on and on but then we might give the impression that we didn’t enjoy it! There were five people we met which were nice! (Yes we kept a tally… )
- Scientist at ice caves
- Scientist at Listvynenka
- Waitress in Kungur
- Buryat woman in Ulan Ude
- Ulan Ude hat lady
Anyway, people on the street don’t smile, in fact we don’t think we heard any Russian people laugh the whole time we were there - we like to think that maybe because its winter but then again maybe not. The smaller town of Kungur felt different, in the larger cities it seems people are too busy rushing about trying to buy as many consumer goods as possible and make up for lost time.
Its quite hard not to be negative about Russia, its somewhere I’ve always really wanted to go and have read a lot about but have left feeling a little disappointed. I had imagined that by learning some of the language and travelling by trains we would meet some genuine people but we only really met drunks. The rudeness and unhelpfulness of the people we did meet shocked us. We could ask open questions such as ‘which number bus do we catch to town’ in Russian and just have the reply of ‘nyet’ back. Great. Normally we have a lot of patience but it was cold and started to grate on us.
Russia is annoyingly expensive, but it seems only because people are willing to pay for a perceived image. People pay way over the odds for things just because Russians think they are western. It’s quite sad to see them all clambering over each other desperate to have every possible status symbol available, it really is consumerism on crack.
On a positive note Mongolia was the best snap decision we have made so far! Everything we were expecting of Russia we have found in Mongolia, friendly people, smiles, good food, wilderness, adventure etc etc. The two weeks we have been here have been amazing. The capitol Ulaan Baatar is a crazy mix of nomadic gers, soviet town planning and new modern glass blocks. The streets are hectic gritty and very Asian, the people hold the door open for you and we found a curry house just round the corner. Lifes good! The best thing about Mongolia is they have really cast aside all the crap that’s been flung at them and truly value their history and customs, unlike the Russians who are pimping themselves off to the American dream. Ok Mongolians want big cars and some new tall buildings, but the music that’s popular is still Mongolian, people wear traditional clothes and most people still live under felt!
Mongolia has the lowest population density of any other country on the planet, the total population is thought to be just 2.9 million (less than half of London) in a country which is apparently the worlds 19th largest. Out of these 2.9 million between 900000 and 1.2 million live in the capitol Ulan Baatar (coldest capital in the world), but this changes on the season as nomads arrive in the winter to pitch up their tents then leave in the summer to graze their livestock. It’s a strange feeling being in a city where half the residents are living in tents! (check out google earth and look all around the centre of the city, its all just round gers!) When you realise how few Mongolians there actually are it really drills home how amazing it is that people all over the world know about them! What other countries with just 2.9 million residents have such a worldwide and fearsome reputation as the Mongolians? Mauritania, Armenia and Oman all have a similar population and we don’t know much about them!
The hotel we were staying in was terrible, £35 a night for a crappy single room with an exceptionally uncomfortable bed booby trapped with sharp wood so only one person could attempt to sleep and then only if they lay in the middle at attempted no sideways movements. I (Sam) slept on the floor for the week, Sarah had the bum deal with the torture bed, man those Russians are evil. We didn’t really find anywhere worthwhile to eat without spending a fortune so survived most of the week on instant noodles and mashed potato with tinned fruit for pudding.. not much else you can make with only a kettle… and to use the kettle you had to go poke the dragon at the end of the corridor and expect a torrent of abuse for making her work (no joke).
Everything about the hotel was such a hassle. After paying for two nights in advance we were given a shitty bit of toilet paper about the size of a credit card with the dates we had paid for circled. We had to take this piece of paper up to the woman on our floor to collect our key, something we were used to, listen to her sigh and tut and generally flap about for a minute or two before she would thrust it into our hand. Every time we went out we would have to find her to swap our key for the same crappy small bit of paper, it would always take five minutes or so to find her which was a pain, but every time we tried to leave with the key she would be there and yell at us until we gave it to her. We had to use this same piece of paper every time we wanted to leave or enter the hotel over the course of the week so it became more and more scrappy.
Its kind of hard to explain the mentality of the people we dealt with in Russia without it sounding like we must have done something wrong or that we are exaggerating We were only there for three weeks and overall we enjoyed our time there, but unfortunately the overriding memory which will stick in our minds about Russia was the shear blatant rudeness of the people we met or had to deal with. Whilst we understand that all those years of communism wasn’t great for creating a customer service culture the reception we commonly received was just awful. It seems that in Russia nobody wants to do their job, fair enough we all feel like that sometimes, so they just take it out on each other by being miserable, not smiling, swearing and shouting or just ignoring each other. There cannot be many countries in the world where you can walk into a hotel reception and stand for ten minutes whilst the receptionist is clearly pretending your not there… it sounds funny and it was for a while, she will just be looking at the computer and no matter how many times we say hello she will not turn to you until she’s ready.
Sarah and I spent a year trying to learn Russian and knew enough to have a basic conversation, ask directions, book a room etc, an effort which would be appreciated in every other country I can think of except Russia. Nope, not Russia, this seemed to get on their nerves more as we couldn’t speak it properly. It was common for people we had asked a question (train staff, hotel staff, ticket ladies) to just shout or unleash a torrent of loud Russian (often causing raised eyebrows amongst bystanders), the word foreigner was heard many times.
Ok, so lots of rambling heres a few examples…
Hotel receptionist Kungur. Wanted to charge us 500 roubles more than the printed rate for the room… when asked why she just faced her computer and completely ignored anything we said regardless of language until we put the money on the table. Cow.
Bin lady in the hotel Ulan Ude. This lady hadn’t once been in to clean our room all week.. on day 4 she came in to empty the bin, we had been nice and put the rubbish in bags all lined up but oh my, how much did she want to tut and sign and moan and go on about it!? It was like a Monty python sketch. We just laughed at her.
Café Listvynenka. Waited about 15 mins to order 2 cups of tea, when the waitress came and we asked she stood there and did the best impression of Harry Enfield we’ve ever seen, shrugging of the shoulders and tuting and sighing, the whole works, think am I bovered. We laughed in her face and told her to smile.
Train stations we were always shouted at.
We could go on and on but then we might give the impression that we didn’t enjoy it! There were five people we met which were nice! (Yes we kept a tally… )
- Scientist at ice caves
- Scientist at Listvynenka
- Waitress in Kungur
- Buryat woman in Ulan Ude
- Ulan Ude hat lady
Anyway, people on the street don’t smile, in fact we don’t think we heard any Russian people laugh the whole time we were there - we like to think that maybe because its winter but then again maybe not. The smaller town of Kungur felt different, in the larger cities it seems people are too busy rushing about trying to buy as many consumer goods as possible and make up for lost time.
Its quite hard not to be negative about Russia, its somewhere I’ve always really wanted to go and have read a lot about but have left feeling a little disappointed. I had imagined that by learning some of the language and travelling by trains we would meet some genuine people but we only really met drunks. The rudeness and unhelpfulness of the people we did meet shocked us. We could ask open questions such as ‘which number bus do we catch to town’ in Russian and just have the reply of ‘nyet’ back. Great. Normally we have a lot of patience but it was cold and started to grate on us.
Russia is annoyingly expensive, but it seems only because people are willing to pay for a perceived image. People pay way over the odds for things just because Russians think they are western. It’s quite sad to see them all clambering over each other desperate to have every possible status symbol available, it really is consumerism on crack.
On a positive note Mongolia was the best snap decision we have made so far! Everything we were expecting of Russia we have found in Mongolia, friendly people, smiles, good food, wilderness, adventure etc etc. The two weeks we have been here have been amazing. The capitol Ulaan Baatar is a crazy mix of nomadic gers, soviet town planning and new modern glass blocks. The streets are hectic gritty and very Asian, the people hold the door open for you and we found a curry house just round the corner. Lifes good! The best thing about Mongolia is they have really cast aside all the crap that’s been flung at them and truly value their history and customs, unlike the Russians who are pimping themselves off to the American dream. Ok Mongolians want big cars and some new tall buildings, but the music that’s popular is still Mongolian, people wear traditional clothes and most people still live under felt!
Mongolia has the lowest population density of any other country on the planet, the total population is thought to be just 2.9 million (less than half of London) in a country which is apparently the worlds 19th largest. Out of these 2.9 million between 900000 and 1.2 million live in the capitol Ulan Baatar (coldest capital in the world), but this changes on the season as nomads arrive in the winter to pitch up their tents then leave in the summer to graze their livestock. It’s a strange feeling being in a city where half the residents are living in tents! (check out google earth and look all around the centre of the city, its all just round gers!) When you realise how few Mongolians there actually are it really drills home how amazing it is that people all over the world know about them! What other countries with just 2.9 million residents have such a worldwide and fearsome reputation as the Mongolians? Mauritania, Armenia and Oman all have a similar population and we don’t know much about them!
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