Friends Guesthouse Mongolia Ulan Bator

... track-suit bottoms and a tee-shirt but he is wearing a traditional Mongolian coat and sash. She lends me a jacket for the horse riding which I establish she has made herself. Our driver speaks some English which helps a little with communication. <br><br>It is definitely the highlight of our visit to Mongolia. And the food is delicious.!<br><br>Food has been a recurring source of amusement, sometimes because we don&#8217;t know what we are ordering ...

... weren&#8217;t very nice but it didnt really matter. We chatted to them using Tuul as our translator for an hour or so before heading to bed at 9 o clock (the nomads go to bed early and wake up early)! To be honest, part of me had thought tourists staying with a nomadic family would be a bit gimmicky and awkward but it wasn&#8217;t at all - partly because there simnply are no hostels or hotels outside the capital so its the only way to do it and partly because ...

... first train station, ShuuBaatar popped into the picture. We stood here for three or four hours too, and when the toilets were not looking like they were going to be opened for a few hours, we went for the closed Duty Free building to enjoy the holes in the floors. Up till this point, our train was two solitary wagons standing in the station by themselves, surrounded by milling Mongolians, waiting for something, good natured, smiling. <br>When I came out of the toilet ...

... got stolen we walked to the police station with the undercover cop who was holding onto the thief and Uya is yelling at the thief and telling him off, but she still yelled at him respectfully because he was older. I laughed after she told me, because I said it was customary for respect to be earned rather than given. <br><br>· It is possible to cut a watermelon in half with a cheap plastic ruler. <br><br>· Crossing the street is the most dangerous ...

I wish shampoo bottles were like toothpaste tubes, that way, the more shampoo you use, the smaller the bottle would get, instead of caring around a large bottle of shampoo that is half empty. <br><br> The second international session was the most international that there has been and the only session where everyday I knew what was going on ahead of time. My group was very good at English and both Uya and I spoke mostly English to them ...

... fantastic. They had traditional dancing, music, clothing, singing, I feel I learned a lot. It seems that a countries culture does not come from the people but from the colors in the national clothing. They a blues, reds, yellows, gold, silver, tons of beautiful colors. I also heard Mongolian throat singing for the first time. I had read about it before I left but to actually hear it is intense. I don't know how they do it, it sounds like it hurts. Apparently ...

... above you. We stopped the van because there was Bryn-sized bird sitting right in front of us. The night before, we saw a wolf loping along the road. There are herds of horses everywhere, and we often drove, horn blaring, through them as they meandered, unconcerned, across the road. Often, off in the distance, we would see men in traditional dels cantering across the open countryside, long herding stick in hand, chasing their groups of horses ...

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... with each other outside the monastery walls as they carried books and buckets, made my heart incredibly glad. When, inside the monastery, the chanting paused and they crashed the gong and cymbals and played the bugle-conch, I couln&#8217;t help grinning like the out-of-town tourist that I was. It was amazing. I wanted to drop everything and start chanting ...

... they either got suck in a rut or fell off on a pot hole. We had almost given up when we checked one more aisle mostly full of boomboxes, kitchen appliances, casset tapes and curtains, when we spotted them in the very left hand corner of a stall. We bargained for two and got them. Great success! Since then I took many trips back. Despite all the warnings and hype about the Black Market being a den of the best pick-pockets in Mongolia ...