First Days in UB City

After arriving in Ulaanbaatar and discovering our hostel, the Golden Gobi, Simon and I headed out to explore the city.  Our first stop was the State Department store, just a stone's throw away from the hostel and keeper of all sorts of cashmere and souvenirs of which we would later avail ourselves.  For the moment, we were content to gape at various traditional Mongolian hats and capes and get a map and Mongolian Tugriks from the ATM - at a colossal 1 dollar to 1323 Tugriks!  Next we walked through the famous Sukhbaatar Square which was the site of the peaceful demonstrations in 1990 which resulted in the ousting of Communism from Mongolia and the dawn of the current democracy.  The square now has several government buildings and museums as well as a statue of Sukhbaatar and Chingis Khan and tons of kids playing and teenagers hanging out.

The "Government House" in Sukhbaatar Square

After the store, we decided we'd start our relationship with UB City by exploring its parks - namely the National Culture and Recreation Park, just south of downtown.  Passing through the city it seemed like the whole place was under construction, and the open manholes were ubiquitous.  Once we got into the park however, we wanted to rename it to the National Desolation Park, as it was apparent the whole area was under construction and no longer in use as a park.  We actually got trapped in the park for a bit as all the exits marked on the map were blocked!  That evening we tried to find Mongolian food but ended up with Russian instead as neither of us can read Mongolian and restaurants all kind of look the same from the outside.  I actually had Czech moussaka - not as good as Greek!

A particularly poignant picnic bench

The following day, we decided to start with the Museum of Political Persecution - not a good place to start our introduction to Mongolia as it turns out, as the English captions were minimal and the flow of the museum really assumed we knew more about Mongolian Soviet history than we did.  Nevertheless, it gave us something to think about and we put some of the puzzle pieces together later in the trip.  Leaving the museum we realized there was an additional 8000T price tag for picture taking - those 2 pictures the museum guy had seen me take were my most expensive yet!

Unfortunate souls labeled as Japanese spies in the 1930s by the Soviet state

After the museum, we went to the Choyjin Lama Monastery Museum which had an impressive collection of small temples and information about Mongolian Buddhism.  The temples were so colorful as to be almost psychodelic and included frightening imagery such as body parts dripping blood and grotesque dance masks.  There were many images of the Buddha in different positions and each temple was dedicated to a different manifestation.  I had my first introduction to tantric religious statuary as well!    I left the complex wishing I knew more about Buddhism in order to understand the temples better.

The outside of the Choyjin Lama Temple complete with ger art shop

The last thing we did before leaving UB City for our 3-day tour of some Mongolian countryside was attend a Mongolian Song and Dance Ensemble.  It was truly amazing and very impressive.  We saw many different traditional dances, shamanistic rituals expressed through dance, and heard a small band perform several 'short songs' or 'not as long traditional songs'.  There were several performers who did some throat singing which is a very striking method of singing 2 notes at once using vibrations in your throat and glottis.  I have some videos which I am working on compressing and will post soon - definitely worth watching!  The last dance was a Buddhist mask dance involving various evil-faced masks being warded off by gods and an old grandfatherly shaman.  We both left the performance very impressed and thinking about all elements of Mongolian culture we had just been privileged to see.

The closing dance of the evening.

Tomorrow, check back for the story of our tour in eastern Mongolia!  Click on the (random Mongolian grocery store) picture below to see a slide show of more pictures from our first days in Ulaanbaatar.