Saturday with Christina

Christina and I got together on Saturday, as we usually do, and decided to visit one of the Buddhist temples and monasteries in town. We looked at the UB map and easily figured out how to get to it and decided to walk there. Unfortunately the distance on the map was deceiving and the monastery was much further from the State Department Store than it looked, but we persevered. The grounds were beautiful: temple buildings with tiled roofs, a huge statue of one of Mongolia's lamas, and monks, old and young, walking around in burgundy and saffron robes. It is considered a good thing to feed the birds here, so there were people walking around selling small bags of bird seed. In spite of the fact that they were pigeon flocks for the most part, it was beautiful to see them take flight every so often and circle around the statues. The sound of their wings was enchanting in the silence of the monastery.

After our visit, we decided to go to dinner at B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue. I think it is rather presumptuous of an American company to borrow the idea of Mongolian food, import it to the US and then bring it back to Mongolia and open a restaurant, but that's what they've done. I was surprised at how popular the restaurant is. There was an even mix of Mongolian and western customers. We enjoyed the meal a lot: Christina even had 2 banana milkshakes! It was by far the most expensive meal I've had in Mongolia, but even so the bill was only 13,000 togrog per person: between $8-9.