Well I spent enough money on trinkets today to make up for the week of spending almost nothing out in the boonies.
Thankfully, it warmed up. Yesterday it got down to 0 F/-18 C. Unfortunately, we chose yesterday to go to one of Asia's largest open air markets. It was fun to see the rows and rows of ger-making supplies, but my fingers and toes hurt.
Today we had lunch at an expat. hangout, I had fun eavesdropping. It was mostly businessmen, but interesting nonetheless.
After that we went to the Political Persecution Memorial Museum. The museum is housed in the home of the former Mongolian prime minister who refused to carry out Stalin's purge on his people (so he was taken to Moscow and executed). The curator said about 30,000 Mongolians were murdered between the late 1930s and up until the 1960s, the majority of victims being Buddhist lamas. Mass graves were being discovered as recently as 2003.
There wasn't much English. But there was a case of skulls - each with a bullet hole through the forehead, top or side.
It was a sobering stop. Communism is so evil. I had professors in college who smirked at that kind of rhetoric like it's hyperbole, but it's not.
Tonight we're going to check out a microbrewery which, according to Lonely Planet, serves some of the nation's best beer. Exciting!
Showing posts with label Mongolia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mongolia. Show all posts
Monday, November 2, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Back in the UB
Well we signed up for a crazy week bumping around the Mongolian countryside in a Russian p.o.s. van and what we got was ... a crazy week bumping around the Mongolian countryside in a Russian p.o.s. van!
We drank vodka distilled from yak milk and airag, which sort of tastes like a sour cream and feta soda beer. We ate sour rock-hard cheeses and way, way too much mutton.
A few nights we stayed in the gers of nomad families.
In short, it was an amazing trip. I'm even a little sad it's over, but at the same time thrilled to be back in civilization.
The most wonderful thing was seeing all that rugged country - the huge blue sky against red cliffs, our jeep rolling past herds of camels and horses. I wanted to take a picture of everything, but it's hard to capture the vastness of it all with a point-and-click, or really any camera. Mongolia is a beautiful country.
I'll be in Mongolia a few more days, and will blog again. Still trying to figure out how to blog from China.
We drank vodka distilled from yak milk and airag, which sort of tastes like a sour cream and feta soda beer. We ate sour rock-hard cheeses and way, way too much mutton.
A few nights we stayed in the gers of nomad families.
In short, it was an amazing trip. I'm even a little sad it's over, but at the same time thrilled to be back in civilization.
The most wonderful thing was seeing all that rugged country - the huge blue sky against red cliffs, our jeep rolling past herds of camels and horses. I wanted to take a picture of everything, but it's hard to capture the vastness of it all with a point-and-click, or really any camera. Mongolia is a beautiful country.
I'll be in Mongolia a few more days, and will blog again. Still trying to figure out how to blog from China.
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