Signseeing in UB

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I decided that today I was going to see the sights of UB, I have only seen a few of the streets and the State Department Store. My first stop was the Gandantegchinlen Khiid, it's a monastery which covers about a sqkm, most of the buildings were crap but there was two I liked and one had a 26.5m standing Buddha (no photos though as this was $5 extra), you can see the photo of the outside of the building though, and the statue reached the roof, very big and impressive. The other building was a nice traditional designed wooden one. There were a few monks around but most of the time there were just kids around who would shove bags of seeds in your pocket (to feed pigeons) and say '1000'. It was a nightmare getting rid of them, in the end I just put the seeds on the ground.

Next stop was Sukhbattar Sq, the main square in UB it was very impressive and had a large new government building at one end, there was also an statue of Chinggis Khaan (Gheghis Khan to you and me), he is actually revered as a national hero here for uniting the Mongol people. I also managed to write a few postcards and send them off, it will be interesting to see how long they take, I reckon two months.

I also managed to find a computer market and bought a USB wireless dongle for 12pounds, I was well chuffed with myself, well that was until I tried to use it. Of course the tool that it uses to connect is all in Chinese, I did try but had no luck connecting. I will have to wait until I get to China and ask someone how it works.

That night was supposed to be a quiet one and it did start off that way, a number of us started watching Sicko, the Micheal Moore film but after about 40 mins I found I wasn't really in the mood. Three other people (incl one of the guys from last night - Mark) were heading out and as they said they were going somewhere local I joined them for a few, once I had a few I decided that I would go to a club with them and this is where the fun began. We must of been to about 4 places, they were either closed or had just been shut down by the police but Mark was determined to find somewhere, after 2 hours we found a place (Metropolis). After being in there for about 20 mins Mark fell asleep and the girls were dancing so I started talking to one of the locals who had showed us where the place was, wish I could have bought him a drink but I was running out of currency (togrogs).

In the end we got back at 4am, and the gate was closed the gave us access to the hostel, the others climbed the fence (with big spike on the top) but I am far to old for all that and know my luck I would get a spike up the arse when I had to get the train in 4 hours. I managed to find another entrance that didn't involve turning me into a human shish kebab.

All in I had 5 beers in 5 hours.......

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Photos

Gandantegchinlen Khiid monastery
The buddha reached the roof