we woke up pulling into ulaan baatar, the capital of mongolia. a small city for a capital, with one main street, a central square and a big buddhist temple. there doesn't seem to be much else yet, except for a lot of dust.. there are the normal things that a capital city should have; a natural history museum, that kind of thing. but no big distinguishing landmarks. no big ben or eiffel tower.
not to say it's not a cool city. we've experienced a welcome here unlike any other, the people are warm and friendly and funny and don't seem to tire of checking you out and giving you assistance.
the guys at the hostel are basically doing all our legwork to sort out a jeep, driver and recommending a list of places to visit over the next 8 days or so.
they did, though, direct us to a "discover mongolia" culture show this evening. in some ways it turned out to be a bit of bad advice but we thoroughly enjoyed the am-dram kitsch performance by a supposedly professional group of singers, dancers and musicians. possibly the most contrived compacted way of absorbing a culture, a sort of cabaret evening of traditional songs and folk dances. oddly it finished with two contortionists - i always thought that was a chinese thing.
it was sort of a comedy of errors, the first dancer kicked a microphone and stand across the stage where it proceeded to trip the other dancers up no end throughout the rest of the dance. this was all stopped when a ember of the audience got up and tried to sort it out.
they used a projector just about bright enough for a living room (not a 600 seat auditorium) and either the lamp was close to the end of its hours or they weren't sending the signal properly because the image projected was made up of various shades of lime green.
the music mix was terrible, i mean really awful, and there was a nasty buzz over one of the channels. it was fun though, funny that in the capital city they were happy to present their traditions in such a badly produced way.
the highlight was the 'throat singing.' this is a skill that mongolian folksmen learn whereby they can sing one melody with a low growl from their diaphragm and throat, and accompany themselves with a top end tone through their nasal passage. it's impossible to explain i words what it sounds like, sort of a cross between some bagpipes and a tractor with a blown exhaust. absolutely amazing though, to see and hear. the first time he added the top end it was like a dentist drill directly into your eardrum, i swear the speakers were moments of exploding from the wall.
i like mongolia so far, generally from the people. and some of the girls are really hot. mongolians describe themselves as having eastern philosophy with a western culture. this seems like a fair description of the society that i've seen today.
some oddities i have seen are the enormous palacial banks with no affiliations. the one we used to change our money had gargantuan gold pillars adorning the front and a restaurant on floor 7. i saw a new mercedes convertible for just over $14,000 (about £7,000) amongst other cars, all retailing for pittance.
while waiting for a table at a busy restaurant, a waitress came up to us and asked us to follow her. we thought she was showing us to a free table but instead she led us - confused but polite - out of the restaurant, down the road and to a completely different establishment. cheeky lady.
the food here is cheap to the point of being ridiculous. matt and i ate our fill at a cafe this evening. it costed £2 in total. get in. the buddhist temple contained (quite hidden away from the world) an enormous gold statue of buddha, about 10 storeys high and indoors.
it seems like a bit of a nuts place, but great with it. the traffic is worse and harder to negotiate than russia. onward!
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