Today was my last day in UB. My train tonight leaves at quarter past 9 and so I had plenty of time to wander around the city and see some of the sights that I missed out on yesterday. Much to my delight, most Mongolians are coming back to the city to reopen the shops and restaurants so I basically had my first chance to buy some basic, but necessary items like water, food, boots, etc.
I first walked to the southern end of Sukhbaatar Square to first see if the Museum of Political Persecution was open but this one was unfortunately still closed. This little, niche museum is supposed to have some very powerful exhibits that describe the history of the Communist purge of its monks, professors, etc in the 1930's. It acts as a historical account of the actions that were taken and as a memorial to those that died. I didn't expect it to be open though, small museum as it is, but these types of regional museums are by far the most interesting. I was hoping...
But next to the museum was the Choijin Lama Temple, an old Buddhist temple that has been out of service since 1938 but the government spared this one as well as the monastery I saw yesterday in order to turn it into a museum, one that is still run today. The first few structures of the complex aren't too exciting, mainly normal temple gates which lead to the main temple hall that houses a very nice selection of Buddhist statues of various warrior deities. All have angry faces, painted red and blue, riding various animals consisting of dragon heads with lion bodies. The deities are holding staffs and spears and their eyes bulge in rage out of their heads. They line the walls of this hall and surround a more serene, golden statue of the Sakyamuni Buddha - a calm, lotus flower holding Buddha in and amongst raging deities.
But this wasn't the interesting part. Once I circled around to the back portion of the serene Buddha statue, it led me to a hidden back temple hall, smaller and darker, with a collection of the most grotesque and fearsome looking statues and paintings I have ever seen in a Buddhist temple. The center of this room was a large, empty seat made with delicate, patterned cushions, too big for a normal man. The walls were further ringed with warrior deities except these one were less than human looking. Some had skulls for heads with three eye sockets and wearing a crown of smaller skulls and flames rising up through the backs of their spines. Others had multiple heads, painted red, with glaring fangs dancing on the broken bodies of humans. Others had hundred of arms, each holding a different weapon. All of the statues were three times the size of a grown human and all were in some warrior dance pose. Behind them were murals painted along the walls and on the ceilings. All of the scenes depicted humans in various forms of suffering. There were graphic paintings of human heads torn from their bodies, people torn in two, getting stabbed, etc. The entire room was filled with this kind of stuff. It was very intense and very old. The room was poorly lit which added to the effect and every corner of every inch of the room was painted or was filled with statues both large and small. A bit frightening for a child but sort of a hidden gem of a collection of Buddhist art work. This museum is an undersell.
I left the museum and, hungry, found a western cafe called Millie's Cappucino. It looked just like an American diner and had the menu to match. I ordered a tuna sandwich with fries and an apple juice. The small diner was full with huge expats. Just really fat people. Some of them were American, some English, some Australian, all of them speaking English with some sort of accent. I found out later that this was a popular spot with diplomatic folks, being in close proximity to the embassy district, but also western contractors and various other entrepreneurs from the west. It is really quite interesting to see the kind of expat this city draws. Most cities I have been traveling to, if they had an expat crowd, were usually either students, sometimes diplomats as in Beijing, or young professionals working for foreign IT or car companies. UB attracts resource tycoons. Since the country is finally opening up its vast countryside to drills, big men from the English speaking world have moved in. For some Mongolians, this means a lot of money moving in very quickly and now the city, amidst the poverty, has opened Louis Vuitton and Gucci shops. I was at one of the original expat pubs last night, a very swanky Irish pub. The place was packed. Half of the people were the western expats earlier described, but the other half were these nouveau riche Mongolians. There is a pretty interesting and unique effect happening in UB.
I also did some chores. I went food shopping at the local supermarket and picked up some cheese, salami, bread, gherkins, stuff like that for the train ride. I am so happy to be eating like a western person again! I bought some boots, some German made winter boots to keep my toes toasty warm, and I packed up.
I'll quickly share some other interesting points to ponder about UB before signing out for a few days. The taxis are awful here. They aren't labeled and there is no system in place to monitor them (even though they have to "register" with the police first). A couple of days ago Nilika, Anna (the British girl from the orphanage), and I went to take a cab from the the bus station that took us back into town from the village where the orphanage was located to our hostel, and I asked Anna, "how do you know which ones are taxis?" She replied, "They're all taxis." You just kind of hop in whichever car stops for you, the driver restarts the odometer (hopefully), and you are charged an often secret or arbitrary rate based on your mileage. Ours luckily was an honest cabbie.
Another weird thing about UB (and I only read about this), is that there exists an entirely underground community of homeless people during the winter within the cities sewer systems. Apparently, there are little options for the homeless in this city and since it is so cold, sleeping without shelter or a heat source in the night can be lethal. In fact, Mongolia has a problem with deaths in winter due to drunkenness, some people pass out in the street and freeze. It's terrible. But I believe that this underground society actually exists because every once in a while I came across an open manhole while walking the streets and, peering down them, it became clear that people have created make-shift ladders that lead down into them. Or some manhole covers are only half covering the manholes themselves - obvious signs.
Lastly, UB is home to much graffiti. Mostly youth, activist graffiti. A lot of this style of graffiti are messages of action, political messages and the like, but a lot of them too are just hilarious messages written in English like, "Don't worry, be happy," or "Piss here (with an arrow pointing to a drain on the sidewalk outside a pub)". My favorite today was, "Youth of Mongolia, put down your pipes! (is it in reference to drugs, weapons, flutes? I don't know).
I'll leave you with the best of UB. See you in Russia!
I first walked to the southern end of Sukhbaatar Square to first see if the Museum of Political Persecution was open but this one was unfortunately still closed. This little, niche museum is supposed to have some very powerful exhibits that describe the history of the Communist purge of its monks, professors, etc in the 1930's. It acts as a historical account of the actions that were taken and as a memorial to those that died. I didn't expect it to be open though, small museum as it is, but these types of regional museums are by far the most interesting. I was hoping...
But next to the museum was the Choijin Lama Temple, an old Buddhist temple that has been out of service since 1938 but the government spared this one as well as the monastery I saw yesterday in order to turn it into a museum, one that is still run today. The first few structures of the complex aren't too exciting, mainly normal temple gates which lead to the main temple hall that houses a very nice selection of Buddhist statues of various warrior deities. All have angry faces, painted red and blue, riding various animals consisting of dragon heads with lion bodies. The deities are holding staffs and spears and their eyes bulge in rage out of their heads. They line the walls of this hall and surround a more serene, golden statue of the Sakyamuni Buddha - a calm, lotus flower holding Buddha in and amongst raging deities.
But this wasn't the interesting part. Once I circled around to the back portion of the serene Buddha statue, it led me to a hidden back temple hall, smaller and darker, with a collection of the most grotesque and fearsome looking statues and paintings I have ever seen in a Buddhist temple. The center of this room was a large, empty seat made with delicate, patterned cushions, too big for a normal man. The walls were further ringed with warrior deities except these one were less than human looking. Some had skulls for heads with three eye sockets and wearing a crown of smaller skulls and flames rising up through the backs of their spines. Others had multiple heads, painted red, with glaring fangs dancing on the broken bodies of humans. Others had hundred of arms, each holding a different weapon. All of the statues were three times the size of a grown human and all were in some warrior dance pose. Behind them were murals painted along the walls and on the ceilings. All of the scenes depicted humans in various forms of suffering. There were graphic paintings of human heads torn from their bodies, people torn in two, getting stabbed, etc. The entire room was filled with this kind of stuff. It was very intense and very old. The room was poorly lit which added to the effect and every corner of every inch of the room was painted or was filled with statues both large and small. A bit frightening for a child but sort of a hidden gem of a collection of Buddhist art work. This museum is an undersell.
I left the museum and, hungry, found a western cafe called Millie's Cappucino. It looked just like an American diner and had the menu to match. I ordered a tuna sandwich with fries and an apple juice. The small diner was full with huge expats. Just really fat people. Some of them were American, some English, some Australian, all of them speaking English with some sort of accent. I found out later that this was a popular spot with diplomatic folks, being in close proximity to the embassy district, but also western contractors and various other entrepreneurs from the west. It is really quite interesting to see the kind of expat this city draws. Most cities I have been traveling to, if they had an expat crowd, were usually either students, sometimes diplomats as in Beijing, or young professionals working for foreign IT or car companies. UB attracts resource tycoons. Since the country is finally opening up its vast countryside to drills, big men from the English speaking world have moved in. For some Mongolians, this means a lot of money moving in very quickly and now the city, amidst the poverty, has opened Louis Vuitton and Gucci shops. I was at one of the original expat pubs last night, a very swanky Irish pub. The place was packed. Half of the people were the western expats earlier described, but the other half were these nouveau riche Mongolians. There is a pretty interesting and unique effect happening in UB.
I also did some chores. I went food shopping at the local supermarket and picked up some cheese, salami, bread, gherkins, stuff like that for the train ride. I am so happy to be eating like a western person again! I bought some boots, some German made winter boots to keep my toes toasty warm, and I packed up.
I'll quickly share some other interesting points to ponder about UB before signing out for a few days. The taxis are awful here. They aren't labeled and there is no system in place to monitor them (even though they have to "register" with the police first). A couple of days ago Nilika, Anna (the British girl from the orphanage), and I went to take a cab from the the bus station that took us back into town from the village where the orphanage was located to our hostel, and I asked Anna, "how do you know which ones are taxis?" She replied, "They're all taxis." You just kind of hop in whichever car stops for you, the driver restarts the odometer (hopefully), and you are charged an often secret or arbitrary rate based on your mileage. Ours luckily was an honest cabbie.
Another weird thing about UB (and I only read about this), is that there exists an entirely underground community of homeless people during the winter within the cities sewer systems. Apparently, there are little options for the homeless in this city and since it is so cold, sleeping without shelter or a heat source in the night can be lethal. In fact, Mongolia has a problem with deaths in winter due to drunkenness, some people pass out in the street and freeze. It's terrible. But I believe that this underground society actually exists because every once in a while I came across an open manhole while walking the streets and, peering down them, it became clear that people have created make-shift ladders that lead down into them. Or some manhole covers are only half covering the manholes themselves - obvious signs.
Lastly, UB is home to much graffiti. Mostly youth, activist graffiti. A lot of this style of graffiti are messages of action, political messages and the like, but a lot of them too are just hilarious messages written in English like, "Don't worry, be happy," or "Piss here (with an arrow pointing to a drain on the sidewalk outside a pub)". My favorite today was, "Youth of Mongolia, put down your pipes! (is it in reference to drugs, weapons, flutes? I don't know).
I'll leave you with the best of UB. See you in Russia!
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| Me and a sleepy Mongolian child at the orphanage |
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| Hanging out with the older teenage boys at the orphanage |
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| A special meal at the orphanage for the White Moon festival |
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| Children at the orphanage enjoying the festival meal |
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| The Lotus Orphanage outside Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia |
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| Village road leading to the Lotus Orphanage |
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| The feet of Buddha, outside the Gandan Khiid monastery |
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| 25 meter statue of the Buddha in Migjid Janraisig Sum, the main hall of the monastery |
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| Sukhbaatar Square, UB city center |
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| Objectify much? |
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| UB has some excellent English language graffiti |
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