The train arrived
at around 9:30 AM as was stated on the schedule. I immediately got my backpack
and walked around. The weather is weird in Ulan Bator. The sunlight is so
intense but there's that cool wind that keeps everything balanced. Still, I was
sweating profusely and I could feel the back of my shirt already drenched with
sweat. Thanks, backpack. My feet brought me to a convenience store. I
asked the young lady sweeping the sidewalk where Sukhbataar Square, the
landmark indicated in the instructions to the guesthouse, was. Luckily, she
answered in English and the answer was 10 kilometers. Shut up?
10 meters would
have been too near and would have placed the guest house within my range of
vision. 10 miles would mean absolutely more walking. So I just smiled, said,
"Thank you.", and walked away. I found a tour operator's office and
asked inside. The guy told me to ride bus number 20 in front of Ulaanbaatar
Train Station. "Four or five stops and you are there.” he said. That
sounds better than walking 10 kilometers. When I saw Air Market, the other
landmark stated on the paper, I collected my stuff in a hurry and got off at
the bus stop where I had my first glimpse of Sukhbaatar Square. My eyes widened,
and like those green aliens in Toy Story, I let out an "Oooooohhh"
out of amazement.
I felt like I owed
myself some rest after the long journey. The truth is that I was able to sleep
pretty well on the train. In fact, I slept too well. But "Lazy" is my
middle name, so despite arriving at UB before lunch, I still chose to waste the
headstart. I stepped out of the guest house at five, ate their version of
Beefsteak at Food Planet (which is really more like "Torta" to us),
and roamed around Suhbaatar Square by six. I was able to finish my tour of the
city's northeast side, at least those shown on the map, in just three hours.
Clearly, there wasn't much to see. Most of the time was spent taking photos and
videos of buildings, both old and new. A short stop at Librairie Papillon was
obligatory. You know bookstores and I. A lot of walking happened, which I often
do. At least I got to have some exercise that I badly needed.
Camwhoring with
Genghis Khan and friends was necessary. You don't see such display of greatness
in a square that often. What would strike you as most notable about
Sukhbaatar's Square is its size. The open space is so welcoming and you could
enjoy watching a lot of people engaged in different activities, may they be
social like sharing the latest gossip in Mongolian, intimate such as holding
hands under Sukhbaatar's horse, sporty like rollerblading or biking, and plain
nasty like spitting. Yes, Mongolians love to spit a lot just like the Chinese,
although I don't think they really "love to", but rather, "have
to". On this side of Asia, this seems to be a common trait dictated by the
same old traditions. Back on topic, if Sukhbaatar (the guy on the horse) has
his own square, Genghis khan has the government palace. He sits majestically on
his throne as the centerpiece of the building's facade. His friends, on the
other hand, guard the sides.
Sukhbaatar and
Genghis belonged to different eras of Mongolia's colorful history, so they
obviously haven't had the chance to meet. At least now they share the same
vicinity teeming with tourists and locals alike. There is plenty of time for a
game of getting to know you. For tourists, however, snapping those photos are
first priority and this might be quite difficult because of the intense heat of
the sun. Finding the right angle is just so damn hard because of its blinding
rays. Perhaps, you'd like to see the surrounding buildings first? You have no
choice so just oblige. The buildings around the square are an odd mix of
different architectural styles and varying ages, from the pastel colored State Academy Theater of Opera and Ballet to the ultramodern Sky Blue across Peace Avenue, you won't run out of buildings to
pose in front of. The thing is, what you are going to realize in the long run
is that you are just taking pictures and nothing else. If culture and history are what you really are interested in, UB has many museums scattered around its districts. On the other hand, if you want to
experience living in a ger or enjoying Mongolia’s natural attractions, you have
to get out of UB.
Terelj National
Park, for example, is a two hour trip east of the city. Locals and tourists
alike go there mostly on weekends. Due to lack of pre departure information and
time, I chose to no longer go. But that does not mean that you don't have to.
The bus going there is said to leave from Peace Avenue at 4 PM and come back
the next day at 8 AM. This info is not verified. It's just stock knowledge from
Gobi Tours Guest House's landlady. What they usually suggest is to spend around
a week if you really want to maximize your Mongolian trip.
Walking around, I noticed
that the locals have been staring at me for like, forever. This is not an
exaggeration. At Zamyn Uud I understood this behavior well enough because I
seemed to be the only foreigner prancing around the train station, but here in
UB you also get to see some tourists, but as you might have figured, most of
them are Caucasians. What do I mean by “staring”? Simple, their eyes are glued
on me. In my short stay of three days I’ve received a lot of attention here ranging
from glances of curiosity similar to what I experienced in Beijing days after (Local
notices me, thinks: “Oh look! There’s a brown foreigner!” and goes on with his
life) to glares of pure perplexity (Local notices me, stares for a minute and
lingers on even after passing by). Some of them in their cars would
even look sideways for a while before focusing on the street. It’s weird, I
know, and what you feel ranges from amusement to annoyance.
Why do they stare
like that, then? I have two theories. Theory A: I look like a malnourished
velociraptor growing a moustache. Theory B: Not a lot of Southeast Asians have
been to this side of the continent. I’d like to believe Theory A, but then that
would dismiss them as a nation of shallow people obsessed with their own
concept of beauty, so let’s just try Theory B.
According to the
tourism magazine that the landlady gave me (there’s a UB map inside), there are
only around 5,000 foreigners in their city, and I would bet that most of them
are Caucasians. In short, white. Caucasians are everywhere in Asia, may they be
the typical tourists with large backpacks or the executives in long sleeves, so
they seem commonplace. So I figured that if you are a Mongolian living in UB,
you would most likely be used to seeing human beings with just two templates
for physical appearance: the fellow Mongolian and the Caucasian. Brown
Southeast Asian? I think not. Maybe on TV? While their government seems to be
doing a lot to promote tourism, it would always be a fact that Mongolia’s
remote location would be a hindrance. To go here by plane is expensive; by train,
time consuming. I would say that the typical Mongolian would probably not be
able to go out of their country for various reasons, very much like a tourist
from Southeast Asia would choose to just go somewhere cheaper and closer to
home. Hence, the curiosity. What am I trying to say?
If ever you find
yourself in Mongolia and get the same treatment, don’t be shocked and just try
to understand them from their own perspective. What I’ve observed after living
with them for a few days in their city and on their trains is that they are
very much like Filipinos. They love to chat and they love to laugh. They are a
happy people. They just seem to be wary of me because I look alien to them,
both literally and figuratively. To add to the problem, I don’t speak their
language, and they don’t speak English that much, but this has not prevented some of them
to try to communicate with me using their own language, probably thinking that
I would finally understand them after some constant repetition. This makes me
believe that they really are a friendly bunch. It’s the language barrier that is the
real culprit here.
Mongolian has a
notorious reputation for being hard to learn. They use a traditional script
written downwards. You would see a lot of this on names of establishments and
road signs in Zamyn Uud and Erenhot, but surprisingly, not so much in UB where
it seems to be used more for aesthetic purposes. This traditional script has
bowed down to Cyrillic, the same alphabet used by many Slavic languages, of
which the most popular is Russian. I know how to read Cyrillic. The thing is
that, it is an alphabet.
It would be
similar to you knowing how to read something in Spanish because Filipino is written
using the same Roman alphabet, but that does not mean that you would understand
it very much like you wouldn’t Hawaiian or Afrikaans. You could probably try to
read them but you wouldn’t know what they really mean. So, is knowledge of Cyrillic indispensable
in UB? I’d say so. Your map would more likely show the street names using the
Roman alphabet, but the actual road sign (if you find any) would be written in
Cyrillic. Example? Sukhbaatar would
be written in your map as Suhbaatar, Sukhbaatar, or Sükhbatar, depending on the
convention of transliteration used. In the actual place, however, it would be
written like this: Сүхбаатар, which you’d
probably try to read in vain as “Kayxbaatap”. So tell me, is your map that
useful to you now?
I’m sorry if I
bored you with some language geek verbal diarrhea. I’m just stating what I
experienced, so you could plan ahead if you want to go to UB as well and maybe try to learn some Cyrllic (it's not that hard, promise). Anyway, I
skipped a mall or two but I was able to cover the whole northeast section of
the city in three hours. If you love shopping you’d probably need more time,
but if you just want to snap a photo in front of a landmark and grab videos of
the interesting places to see, half a day would most likely suffice, for
Suhbaatar. Spare around a hundred US dollars if you want to buy a cashmere product that would come in handy in cold weather conditions. Mongolia is really famous for those cashmere coats.
SUKHBAATAR: 02 - I’m Usually the One Who Does the Staring
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