to market to market...

In a follow up to the last post, my mum has kindly translated the menu for me! I'm wishing now that I had posted more pictures. So all is revealed:

1) Stir fried fresh prawns with onions in XO sauce
2) Two colour beef balls/nuggets
3) Delicious trotter flower
4) ? head in aged vinegar
5) Ah Por's (grandma's) drunken fish
6) Big stretch skin (yum) north east style

THANKS MUM! Though I do still wonder what kind of head it was. And Mum, what's big stretch skin? Maybe I'll go back and suss it out.

The trip to the Narantuul markets was pretty successful albeit a little overwhelming! The market is immense. I read somewhere that in the summer months more than 60,000 people can squeeze in on any day. I thought it was pretty bad when we went! The market is also a hotbed for pickpockets so we were warned against taking any valuables (hence the need for a stolen google image!); I just took cash and left everything else at home. Really good advice!

A stolen picture of Narantuul's main entrance. In summer.

 You can buy pretty much anything here; even all you need to build yourself a ger, including the kitchen sink. We went to get some house stuff and a I was after a light/medium weight winter jacket. I brought stuff for the super cold but forgot about the 'tween time where I could have done with my array of coats at home! I've survived with just a merino wool hoodie but it won't be much use as the days are rapidly getting shorter and colder. Another AYAD told me that we're losing 6 minutes of sunlight every day. Rad. We all got humidifiers too. They're not kidding when they say it's a "dry" cold. I now understand what various people had told me about this. Even in this first week I've awoken in the morning with a mouth and nose as dry as the Gobi desert. It can get so bad that nosebleeds aren't uncommon. Fantastic. We put our new gadget on in the hotel room only to discover it has multicolored disco lights that flash when it's in operation. I'm pretty sure that's going to get old very quickly! But it was very effective.

Disco humidifier.

I bought a jacket too. Most of the women's ones I tried had an embarrassing number of X's on the size label and I STILL couldn't get them zipped. My room mate and soon to be housemate, who is probably a size 10 Aus, had to buy an XXL jacket. I changed tack and went for men's and got a PUFFER JACKET for about $40. I used to laugh at all those who owned puffer jackets. Now I can only laugh at myself. 

Puff Banny

One of the stall holders looked quizzically at me whilst I tried on a rather pungent smelling down jacket (it smelt like oily duck flesh!), "Kazakh, Kazakh?" I didn't really figure it out until later. I told Boggie (one of the program managers who took us around and did a bit of bargaining for us...she saved us about 50c-$1 here and there, but it was fun) what had happened and she said "Oh, yes! To Mongolian people you look like Kazakh". That's pretty cool! 

Chocolate heaven

Jess looking pretty excited about mutton flavoured noodles

On Sunday we walked to the Sky Department store which isn't far from our hotel. It's quite small but it was exciting wandering around the supermarket section and seeing lots of familiar brands, though most are much more expensive to buy here than at home. Before coming here most of the AYADs had been scared into thinking this place was some kind of barren food waste land and that we'd be eating mutton fat and dried curds. My favourite!


We also went to the Mercury and...Bombogar? food markets where I was excited to see an excellent array of fresh veg. Most stuff is imported from China, Russia and the USA so it's pretty expensive. And because many things don't transport well, the selection is pretty small and what is available can appear a bit battered and bruised.  Apparently (and fairly unsurprisingly) the supply dwindles quite a lot in winter.

Stinky smoked string cheese

At Mercury Market I bought smoked Mongolian string cheese! It's really salty but is amazing with beer. It's been relegated to the fridge as it's also quite stinky!


Tomorrow we start our language lessons! We've picked up a few basics like thank you ("bayarkhla") and goodbye ("bayarte") but it's going to be a real challenge for all of us. It's also cup day tomorrow so some other AYADs (there are about 20 of us in country at the moment, from three intakes) are putting on a cup day celebration at their apartment. It's known as "the hulk" as the whole block is green and many of the fixtures are fluorescent green, it's straight out of the 80s. There'll be a cup sweep and drinks of course, but we have to buy up tonight as on the first of the month no alcohol is allowed to be sold.


There is a really big drinking problem here, especially amongst the many homeless.  Unfortunately we have already seen the results of what happens when alcohol, homelessness and extreme cold mix.  There are a number of beggars on the streets who've had limb amputations, often more than one, because of frostbite. I naively asked about where the homeless "go" during winter. I should have figured it out for myself given the number of broken and missing man hole covers that are all over the city. The man holes lead to the sewers where it is warm and where the homeless find shelter during winter. It's really awful.


Sorry to end on such a bum note, but this stuff is incredible.


As I'm moving tonight, I will be without regular internet for the next week at least (that's a fairly conservative estimate!). Please feel free to comment and ask questions in my absence! I'll do my best to illustrate what life is like here.


Ax

why oh why?

A few weeks before I left for this trip, a woman in my choir asked for how long I was staying in Mongolia. Eleven months, I replied. She nearly choked and had to steady herself on a pew, "I thought you were going on HOLIDAY". It was by far the best reaction I'd had to this trip so far (hi Mary if you're reading this!). Of course then she asked "WHY?!"

Well, I didn't necessarily choose to come to Mongolia specifically, but it happens to be the location of my AYAD assignment:

My profile from the AYAD website. Yes. I unashamedly love Bear Grylls.

I'll be at the Lotus Children's Centre which is an orphanage that was set up by an Australian woman back in the mid 90s. They have a new facebook page with loads of gorgeous photos.  This year the Mongol Rally have chosen Lotus to be one of the official charities it will sponsor. So who's in? You can come and stay with me after you cross the finish line! I'll take you out afterwards for the best buutz in town!

The process of actually getting here was pretty drawn out. I think the assignments for this intake (#32) went up in May and I didn't hear back until August..."mobilisation" was just last Saturday which feels like ages ago. It's been a long week!

This week the seven of us have been put up at Michelle Hotel (I have just discovered the link function...can you tell?) which looks pretty fancy in the photos, but it's seen better days. However it does have free wifi! And is conveniently located to a Chinese restaurant which has the most amazing menu selection I have ever seen:

"Add onion explodes the shrimp"

"Double bag beef balls" - most definitely my favourite.

"The delicacy elbow flower"

"Old vinegar head"

"The old woman inebriates the fish"

"The northeast pulls the skin greatly"

Yep. Pretty amazing. Perhaps if my mum is reading this she can send through the actual translations.


Before getting here I did a fair bit of research into the cuisine here. It didn't really get me excited. And I'm usually pretty excited to try most anything (I did eat, and have photographic proof of my eating of rooster testicles in Budapest...really not as bad as it sounds).

Tasty, tasty balls.

At PDT (post departure training...AYAD loves acronyms), Zoloo (a young Mongolian national studying at ANU) said that, and I quote, "Mongolian's are pretty lazy" when it comes to food. For instance, one of the traditional dishes is horhog. Note the number of "optional" ingredients. And when they say sheep. They mean mutton. I've had my first taste. It's pretty pungent, but not unbearable.  The other traditional dishes are buutz - mutton dumplings.  I say dishes because you can have steamed buutz or fried buutz. That counts as two right?  Buutz were described to me as 'like Chinese dumplngs, but without all the flavour'. Yum. On our first night we were taken out to Nomad's which is a chain of Mongolian restaurants (or Pectopah as they're so affectionately known now). I chose from the picture menu what I had imagined to be a beef and veggie stir fry. It's known as Tsuvan here. It was definitely a sort of stir fry...but yeah. Don't get your hopes up about the traditional cuisine here. Mostly it's pretty "pure" (...bland) and there's not a lot of vegetable matter but quite a lot of fat in everything. Big gooey chunks of it.  Mongolian people believe the fat is the best part of the meat and to leave it on the plate, as I did, is considered pretty weird! But considering that on average, the temperature is below 0 celcius 8 months of the year (hence the name of this blog), they need all they can get to help them survive.


BUT! Since getting here we've eaten out every lunch and dinner and I am yet to be disappointed! I've had NORTH Korean, vegan and vegetarian, Indian that would put some of Melbourne's countless curry joints to shame, and spectacular pizza from DoDo. I've even eaten salad. Yep, that green stuff that I feared I'd miss the most. It's here. And it's pretty good! There's quite a large community of expats here and with them they've brought their delicious food! Unfortunately for me this means that the "Mongolian Diet" that I had imagined isn't exactly going to help me along in the weight loss stakes. I'm not even at risk of UB belly, as there really isn't such a thing as it's too bloody cold for any bugs to exist!


In between all of this week's eating, our group has had to find apartments to stay in for the rest of the year. It's pretty stressful. But after seeing 11 apartments in 2 days me and two other girls will be moving into a gorgeous soviet apartment affectionately known as grandma's flat. The video is pretty unique.


Tonight we went to the monthly open mic night at Xanadu art gallery. I wreak of cigarette smoke. It's really hard to get used to the indoor smoking now that we've been spoilt with the smoking ban in Oz.  But the beer was cheap (2500 Tugs, or about $2 for 500ml of Tiger) and company was fun. I even ate a kebab on the way home. It was just like a Friday night at home but at -2 degrees! Tomorrow (after a well deserved sleep in) we're off to Narantuul or the "Black markets". I've been told to brace myself. I really hope that this kebab doesn't go dodgy on me...


Ax

just a quicky

This is the video I tried to upload last time. It's just a teeny tiny snippet of the traditional song and dance performance we went to see on Tuesday night. The group is called Tumen Ekh, they're the Mongolian National Song and Dance Ensemble. Enjoy!

first glimpse

Before I left, I promised everyone I'd keep a blog so that they could keep track of my Mongolian adventure. I'll do my best to post regularly (especially photos/videos) as, let's face it; in the scheme of places people go on holiday, Mongolia isn't normally high on the list.

My impression from my first two days here (hardly enough time to make much of one, to be honest) I can confirm these things:

The landscape is amazing (these are from the plane so forgive me!):

This was literally my first glimpse

UB from above

I call this Ger love

The sky really is as blue as they come:

Gandantegchenling Monastery

Soviet Monument

Looking out over UB from the Soviet Monument

The children are adorable:

"Moses" amongst the pigeons

 The pollution is..well, this is only the beginning:

The smudged view of UB from the Soviet monument.

Power station

 The culture is amazing:

One of the many Shaman masks used in the traditional performance we attended on Tuesday night

I have an amazing video to share but I'm having trouble uploading it...next time.


Ax