UB

Ulaan Bataar, Ulan Bator, Ulaan Baatar, Ulan Batar, Ulanbatar or as travellers call it, UB, it's the capital of Mongolia and contains half of its population.  It seems that no one has agreed on how to spell the name of this city in the Latin Alphabet.  It means Red Hero in Mongol.  Mongol is written in the cyrillic alphabet, thanks to the fact that the SONETICOS offered to help Mongolia out when the country decided to become communist.  Tehre is a great legacy from that era, for example you can see evidence of the infamous Soviet urban planning system and many Mongolians were educated in communist states. In the supermarkets you can find many Russian and (east) German products and a large number of cultural and environmental projects with East German collaboration.  Now the United States collaborates a lot, to show the Russians and the chinese that even though Mongolia is sandwiched between these two titans, it's not alone in the world. The train between Russia and Mongolia was pretty much a tourist train as tehre were very few Russians or Mongolians.  All of the passengers had booked some hostel and absolutely all of them apart from myself were picked up at 6am from the station.  I had other plans, but the cold morning, tiredness, the sudden solitude and the bad reputation of the city made me have second thoughts.  I arrangeed it so that I would arrive at Begz' work, another CS member with whom I was going to stay 2 nights.  The decision of being hosted by Begz and his family was being clouded over by the desire to be able to take my bag off, the fact that hostels in UB cost 6 dollars per nights and the fact that Begz had a rule in his house that guests should pay 7000 tughriks as he had 6 mouths to feed in his house. This rule goes against the principle of CS, that it should be a cultural exchange and free accommodation.  When you mix money in the equation the principle is damaged and you might start having expectations from the price paid.  In spite of this, I decided to see what would happen.  I met Begz and two Americans that had stayed with him.  Begz told me that I should come back at 6pm so that his kids could take me to the house.  I spend the day with the Americans, speaking about their stay in Begz' house which seemed promising, according to the American enthusiasm.  One of these two guys was obsessed with the 'red button' - if the Chinese decide to invade Russia, the Russians will use the red button, if the Russians annoy the Americans, the red button to the rescue, and Iran can show its power using the red button. In the afternoon I went back to Begz' work and met two of his children, ? , who took me to their ger in the suburbs of the city by a disgustingly full and unpleasant bus.  After an hour of being pushed and shoved around, we arrived at his modest residence and I met the motherand the other two daughters (whose names I forgot after 10 seconds). This family is really traditional.  They live with few comforts; they have 2 cows, a dog, and there is no drinking water at home.  The woman got up, did her Buddhist prayers and spent the rest of the day like a little ant, working without respite until it was time to go to bed.  They cooked with cow manure and also used it to heat up the ger.  We played typical games with sheep bones which were used for everything - darts, cards.. I couldn't beat Todo in many of the games that we played and I found Manuji really sweet.  Then Begz showed me his guest book where each traveller described what a great time they had.  He also showed me how his name appears in the book 'On the Couch', written by an English girl who went around the world only doing CS and ten writing a book about it.  Begz, shirtless, told me about Mongolia, its projects and customs, for example you have to lick the plate as soon as you finish eating.  I didn't believe it until I saw him and the boys cleaning the dishes, using their tongues at the same time.  They all sleep together on the floor as soon as dinner is finished, and I didn't ask how they make children in that mess of arms and legs. For breakfast they gave me tea, home-made jam, bread that was a bit crusty due to the egg shell that Begz' wife added to it, and butter that they had made the night before and which tasted just as good as the butter my grandfather used to make. It was a unique place and experience and I don't regret having gone there.  The only bad thing was that the house was far from the centre and it was very difficult to get there alone so I couldn't spend much time in the city, and this can be a nightmare when you try to organise a tour through Mongolia.  After the second night I decided to go to a hostel in the centre of the city and many things started to improve - I managed to find a tour to the Gobi desert at a good price and the other people in the group, John and Demian from Wales, Joe from England and Silvia from Austria seemed like a good combination for a two week trip. As far as CS is concerned, it's a great idea and I really like taking part in it, but it takes up quite a lot of time and effort and you need to be really flexible.  Now that I'm going into more varied countries, it becomes more difficult to find hosts, so I'll stop this type of travel for the time being.  Gobi, here we come! pd.  this post was ready ages ago but the chinese internet blockade is too strong and I just managed to bypass it :D