Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. March 25-30, 2010

Must stop Facebooking...must start Blogging.
We have been in Mongolia for two weeks now, and have done some amazing things and seen some pretty far out places.
We arrived in Ulaan Baatar (way too many a's, ay) after a very relaxing 30-hour train trip. It was more freezing than Beijing, but the skies are so blue and the air much crisper (at least at the train station...by the main road you can feel the grit on your teeth from the pollution). The whole family from our hostel, the Golden Gobi, met us at the train station, as they were scouting for more tourists to entice in.
Ulaan Baatar is the epitome of a gateway to the countryside. International trains, buses and planes arrive and depart from here; there's a few museums and a monastery...and that's about all it's got going for it. There are so many hostels and tour agencies offering (I just fell off my chair... but Phill caught me in the nick of time) jeep and van tours out of town - definitely what we came to Mongolia for. But being winter, there's not many travellers to share a tour with. Our hostel owner offered a 6-night tour for just Phill and I for $500 each, but that was just a bit too exxy for us. So we waited in UB for 5 nights until another couple came to town and we planned a tour together, bringing the price down to $300 per person.
Our five days in UB were pretty uneventful I'm afraid. We saw the Buddhist Monastery, Gandan Khid, which has a massive 25-metre golden (gilded...) statue of...wow I should find this out...a statue of a god.... There is a massive market in UB, three huge sheds and aisles and aisles of everything your could ever need - pigs heads, fake Adidas tracksuits, boots and shoes (none in my size unfortunately), bicycles, crockery, prams, baked goods, felt for gers, rice cookers, cashmere...and it's huge. Luckily I think Phill's beard scared off potential pick pocketers. That, and all we had in our pockets were dirty tissues.
Any animals close to extinction can surely be cloned from the specimens in UB's Natural History Museum. They have stuffed bears, birds, kangaroos, rats, and wolverines. Let me tell you, Wolverine is not an appropriate name for the awesomeness that is Hugh Jackman in X-Men. Real wolverines are pissy little doggy wolf things, without any super human powers or extendable steel claws. Letting us down, nature. The animals were stuffed with the most perplexed expressions - 'why are you doing this to me, Genghis?' - and some had those googly eyes from kids craft kits pasted into their eye sockets. Quality, for $2.
On our second night in UB we met up with our friend we met on the plane to Beijing, Andrew from Perth. He is working here for five months and shares a tiny apartment in an old Soviet building with a Czech guy and girl. We downed a bottle of vodka while watching AFL on the Australian Network and talking Australian rock music with a Mongolian colleague of Andrew's (Jet is making a comeback in Mongolia) before hitting the town (me in my hiking boots and thermals), and promptly falling asleep in a bar, then running back to our hostel to avoid both muggers and hypothermia. Needless to say, we spent the next day recovering.
Ulaan Baatar is on par with Jakarta for the worst traffic, roads and cars. Pedestrian crossings are ignored, horns are constantly beeping, buses scream past and then screech on their brakes at traffic lights...which are often ignored. We like to cross the road with at least one Mongolian on either side of us. The footpath is full of potholes, ice patches and open drains.
But the Mongoloids are pretty cool. The women are amazing, the epitome of Eurasian beauty. They have the height (and legs) of Russians, with big eyes, dark skin and serious cheek bones. The city women wear amazingly high heeled boots, no mean feat considering the footpaths (I'm not even sorry about that pun, I've had it in my head for days now). They wear beautiful clothes and big winter jackets and have long dark hair. Everyone wears makeup, even the market ladies and waitresses - we saw one girl doing another's makeup in the kitchen of a small fast food place. Needless to say I feel like a douche in my hiking boots, purple ski pants, windproof jacket and beanie. Some of the men are alright on the eye as well.