Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, The Mystery Of The Missing Stalin Statue

It is going to be difficult to write about Mongolia. We spent two weeks here which were mostly spent in a Russian van driving around the country side. But the experience was so amazing and so different to anything that I’ll not be able to accurately describe it, and even my incredible photos I got won’t do justice to the beauty of the land.

Ulaanbaatar

The marching band army of Mongolia

The first two days were spent in the capital city of UB, staying at the appropriately named UB Guesthouse (US$5 a night, great deal). Here we used most of our time sorting out a tour to go on around Mongolia, and a little bit of time partying with friends made on the train into town.
The city is quite similar to Russian cities, big industrial plants are interwoven with ugly apartment blocks. But the Asian influence and general Mongolian feel of the place gave it a refreshing feel. There are numerous building projects going on showing that the place is experiencing economical growth, although this might just be all the American dollars flowing in as aid, which is most likely secretly going to the exploitation of untouched mineral deposits around.

Chinggis is a big dude, watch yourself around him, he is crazy

The first day we explored a few local sights, after seeing the Ulaanbaatar square with Chinggis Khan sitting appropriately at one end over looking his empire we headed to the Museum of Natural History. The museum is stocked with poorly taxidermied animals and some fossils included a full t-rex skeleton. Presentation had obviously not been included in last years budget, as every animal had fully visible stitch marks and facial furs which had been stretched poorly over their skeletons.

The natural history museum's priceless artefacts are protected by this dude

That night we went out for a local dining experience. The place chosen had a cheap menu to persuade us in. After accepting the invitation we were invited down into the basement of the restaurant, this was one of those horribly uncomfortable situations where you have no idea what is going on due to language barriers. We assumed we were actually being seated at the very last available seats which happened to be large couches which looked like the place where local mafia would sit around and have vodka and cigars while being entertained by some 'women of the night'. Then after watching some dodgy man trying to convince a young lady to go with him into the bathroom we were finally seated in our actual seats out of the basement. Mutton was the only real option on the menu, so variations of this was ordered. The best being buuz (pronounced booze) a dumpling filled with tasty mutton. YUM!

Prayer wheels, turn them clockwise to send off a prayer

After getting in a feed Tom, our two European friends from the train and I headed off to a nightclub that according to the good old lonely planet had a 15m Stalin statue inside. Disappointingly the statue was now a myth, but the club was still pumping Mongolian styles so we stuck around. Even though Mongolia is kind of a backwards country, you’d assume they could still get talented DJ’s in the clubs. The DJ was well off point, playing terrible techno from the year 1999 while struggling to mix together two tracks without completely screwing up, but nothing yelling into the microphone couldn’t fix to get the 10 people large crowd pumped again. Loads of classic cheesy dance moves went down until the clubs midnight closing time was reached.

Gandan Khiid's main temple, inside the giant buddha (example here)

The following day we got up early enough to get to the main monastery in UB, Gandan Khiid , in time to see the practicing monks do their morning prayers. The monastery was really good, slightly over run by pigeons, but the guano and feathers gave the place a real Buddhist atmosphere. The highlight was the 25 metre Buddha statue contained in the main building. Obviously very different from western views on idolatry but was quite fascinating. After turning a few prayer wheels we headed off to the black market of Ulaanbaatar.

The kids play with the pigeons

The market is one of the biggest in Asia and contains nearly everything you could ever need and none of it the real deal making it all fantastically cheap. We got everything we needed for going out into the wilderness for two weeks at a super low price and didn’t even manage to get pick pocketed while doing so. Although some other travelers told us they’d purposely placed a few lose bills slightly hanging out of their pockets after reading about the notorious theft that occurs and managed to have it all flogged.

Next we ran back to the hostel to make our tour meeting. We managed to, while heavily sweating, arrange a 12 night adventure with an American couple around the Gobi Desert for 6 nights and then up around Central Mongolia for the rest of the time. This begun a mad rush of things that needed to be completed before going into the middle of nowhere such as applying for a Chinese visa and getting train tickets out of Mongolia. The following 20 hours were the most stressful of the entire trip after doing endless odd jobs and having to deal with an incompetent train ticketing office multiple times. Needless to say that tears were shed and getting into the van to leave on our stress free adventure was the perfect remedy for nearly wanting to kill everyone around.