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in the footsteps of chinggis khan
Oct. 11th, 2006 02:58 amUlaan Baatar: a godforsaken outpost that time forgot in the middle of Mongolia's squalid, all-but-abandoned wasteland, right?
Guess again. This is a thriving, humming hub of commerce, teeming with German breweries, Korean restaurants, French bakeries, Irish pubs, Hollywood movie theatres, American missionaries, billboards advertising mining equipment and Western cosmetics, horn-honking traffic jams of Hyundais and Mercedes and Land Cruisers, plentiful cheap Internet cafes (600 tögrög/US$.60/hr), new construction everywhere you look, and the Mongols themselves slouching about in laid-back Western-cool brand-name black and denim, tattoos and coloured hair - there's even a goth scene. There's money sloshing all over the place in today's UB. Looks a bit like an overheated bubble economy to me, but what do I know?
( the lost boys of ulaan baatar )
( the middle of nowhere, the center of the world )
1though the pipes were frozen - did I mention that it dropped below freezing every night, and we've been snowed on several times here? - and we had to use the "happy house" instead.
( home, home on the range, where the yak and the camel herds play )
On Friday the 13th, if our tickets ever arrive (long story), we will take the train through the Gobi to Beijing. Haven't been there since March 1997. I bet it's different now.
Guess again. This is a thriving, humming hub of commerce, teeming with German breweries, Korean restaurants, French bakeries, Irish pubs, Hollywood movie theatres, American missionaries, billboards advertising mining equipment and Western cosmetics, horn-honking traffic jams of Hyundais and Mercedes and Land Cruisers, plentiful cheap Internet cafes (600 tögrög/US$.60/hr), new construction everywhere you look, and the Mongols themselves slouching about in laid-back Western-cool brand-name black and denim, tattoos and coloured hair - there's even a goth scene. There's money sloshing all over the place in today's UB. Looks a bit like an overheated bubble economy to me, but what do I know?
( the lost boys of ulaan baatar )
( the middle of nowhere, the center of the world )
1though the pipes were frozen - did I mention that it dropped below freezing every night, and we've been snowed on several times here? - and we had to use the "happy house" instead.
( home, home on the range, where the yak and the camel herds play )
On Friday the 13th, if our tickets ever arrive (long story), we will take the train through the Gobi to Beijing. Haven't been there since March 1997. I bet it's different now.
