Yesterday afternoon with Jasmin

Yesterday Jasmin and I walked to Sukhbataar Square, which is right in front of the government building. The square is named in honor of Sukhbataar (or Sukhbaatar, the spelling differs), who was a military hero from the 1921 revolution against China. For a while Mongolia was part of Manchuria, and then broke away before it was incorporated as part of the USSR. Sukhbataar means "axe hero" in Mongolian. From there we walked to the State Department Store, since those 2 are the only places I can find in UB. She did a little souvenir shopping and I bought yet another electric cord. I'm still trying to get my netbook charged: there are so many connections and plug types to consider - but I think I've finally got the problem solved.

We also did some grocery shopping at the dept. store. There is a large food dept. on the first floor of the dept. store, much bigger than my Minii, so we had fun looking at things and seeing how different things are packaged. For example, you can buy mayonnaise in a jar, just like at home, but you can also purchase it in a bag, in a squeeze tube, or in something like a juice box.

By the way, there are no coins in Mongolia. There are bills for everything, even down to a 10 togrog note, which would be worth about .7 cents. Not 7 cents, mind you, .7 cents. Prices can be scary here, although on closer inspection, they are quite reasonable. It's just that seeing something with a price tag of 12,000 togrog takes a moment to absorb. Generally I lop off the 3 right-hand digits, and then work on the premise that one dollar is about 1.5 togrog (actually, it's 1.46 togrog). If $12 doesn't scare me for the 12,000 togrog item, then I know that the price is actually much less than that.

After our shopping trip, we tried to catch a taxi home, but were unsuccessful. I don't know if the traffic was just too busy, and all the cabs were taken, or if we were standing in the wrong spot (although we were shown where to stand), or if there were just no cabs in the area. It is very difficult to identify taxis here. None of them seems to have the triangular sign on top that we are used to, so we aren't sure what went wrong. Anyway, we had to walk all the way back to the apt., carrying our precious cargo with us, and of course, we had bought bottles of water and juice and soda. We were exhausted by the time we got home and in spite of our original idea to fix a proper meal at home, we just ate some salad and rolls and went to bed.

The big news: We are taking off tomorrow for Khustain Nuruu National Park where some of the Takhi are located. I'm hoping to get some good photos. I won't be posting to the blog in the morning (my morning), but may be able to do it at night, although I don't know exactly when we'll be returning. So it may be Friday morning (your Thursday night) before I can deliver my Takhi Update report. Khustain Nuruu park is about 100 km from UB; I've been told it takes about 2 hrs to get there by jeep.