Ulaanbaatar
Trip Start
Jul 17, 2008
1
7
26
Trip End
Aug 16, 2008
Ulaanbaatar,
Mongolia
Monday, July 21, 2008
- french fries (Mongolian home fries?)
- spagetti (no meatballs)
- dumplings
- a really good cucumber/tomato salad
- mashed potatos
After breakfast a group of the team head off to the Black Market. This is a huge open air market where you can find anything. Though most of it won't be real. I suppose there is some arrangement with factories in China which allows them to get cheap goods. Or they just knock them off. You can get anything in this market, shoes, pants, glasses, home goods, bicycle parts (you can literally build a bike from all the parts), pharmaceuticals, groceries, cars.
We have some trouble finding our way there and have to ask for directions several times. We pass by a street vendor and a few of us decide to try the street meat. We guessed it was mutton but really it could have been anything. When the vendor started to try to put sauce and vegetables on the plate we quickly declined. No sense in adding further risk! It was good. And no one got sick. It was mutton.
We finally find an area that looks like the black market. This area is essentially a bunch of boarded up "stalls". It reminded me of Canal Street. We round the corner and it ends. This wasn't the black market. But we see these women carrying huge bags of potatos over a fence. We ask them if the black market is on the other side. Yes. Success! I climb up this fence with footholes obviously created by locals. The other side is stall after stall after stall. The group of about 10 climb down the other side after some discussion on the easiest and safest way, much to the amusement of the locals. We had ended up on freighter storage containers used by marchants to store their goods.
Mongolians have a tradition/superstition. If you step on someone's foot you need to immediately shake their hand otherwise you are said to be enemies forever. While in the market Lucille, one of the participants, backed into my and accidently stepped on my foot. She immediately spun around and shook my hand. An older Mongolian man looking on, nodded in approval.
We had been warned that the black market was notorious for pickpockets. We fended off two such attempts. Thankfully moving in a largish group makes it harder to steal from. But that didn't stop thieves from operating around us. I saw a man grab a half full 1 liter bottle of water. He was apprehended. Then we were at a stall when a man picked up a medal and was examining it. The stall owner grabbed it out of his hand and pushed him away screaming at him. He got some good air.
On the way back I found 50 tugrik's (Mongolian currency, ~1100 tugriks per $1 CA/US) wrapped in red yarn in a triangle. I am keeping it as a good luck piece.
On the walk back we go to a pub. The menu was completely in Mongolian. We order some beer and then play Mongolian food roulette and order 4 items randomly by pointing on the menu. We end up with an egg salad, a cucumber/tomato salad, lamb kebobs, and a cheeseburger. It worked out well that we agree we should try this again at another point on the trip.
We get back to the hotel and head into the Habitat meeting. We meet the group, meet the Mongolia Habitat coordinators and staff. It turns out that we're still missing one member of the group. He arrived 5 or so days earlier but no one had heard from him since. Near the end of the meeting Sid shows up and the group is complete. He had been on a yurt to yurt trip and was understandably out of service. (These trips you essentially live with a Mongolian family for a day on their property and can help them with their daily lives.)
Missing bag count: 4.
