First day in Ulaanbaatar

The 15 hour ride turned out to be pretty pleasant. I sat with a really nice Mongolian family, and they taught me some basic Mongolian phrases. When someone showed up and took my bunk, they even moved their luggage to the floor and let me sleep on the luggage rack.

Ulaanbaatar is really nothing like what I imagined. From what I heard, I expected a huge, sprawling and dangerous city somewhat like Mexico City. In fact, it's just a small, run down town that's easily navigable. It's probably smaller than Tainan (4th largest city in Taiwan). I managed to learn some Cyrillic on the train, so I could sort of make out what these signs say.




Having come here in such a rush, I had no idea where to stay. I decided to stay at the first hostel I saw - which was Khonggor Guesthouse. There, I found out that 9 other foreign travelers took the same overnight train from Erenhot. They all met each other at some point except for me, and were staying in different hostels. I walked around with one of them, and since Ulaanbaatar is such a small place, we managed to bump into the remaining 8 within a few hours.

I walked past a building that said Taiwanese Cultural Center - and I walked in to take a look. It's the Taiwanese "embassy" (China won't allow us to use the word) and they also have a program that provides aid to Mongolian kids. The people were SO happy to see me - apparently there are only about 10 Taiwanese in Mongolia, and the director talked to me for about an hour. They've been here for about 2 years, so I will have some local support if I decide to stay.

Later on we went to the Gandan Khiid Monastery - a complex of a few temples, one of which was home to the 13th Dalai Lama in 1904. We were lucky enough to witness monks making sand mandalas - which they eventually will destroy to symbolize the transience of life.




Also saw some people playing pool outdoors with playing cards - I wonder what the rules are.



One annoying thing about Mongolia is that as a solo traveler, to see the sights you most likely have to go on a tour, unless you have decent outdoor survival skills and a lot of cash to hire a private jeep. So I decided to take a short tour before my volunteer project on Sunday, and we finally booked one with UB guesthouse - leaving tomorrow to Terelj National Park for 2 days.