Ulan-Ude

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Ulan-Ude is the last city I visit in Russia, it is located near the border of Mongolia. After been here several hours this place is still weird to me. More than half of population here is Buryats, a mongolian people that been divided into the Sovjet. Now centuries later, every asian-looking person on the street speaks russian. The other half are white peobple and mixed with exotic/weird looks. I don't know why I am fascinated of a such a mixed society of whites and asians, I could just watch them all day long.

There are not many foreign tourists in this town, I actually think I am the only one don't speak russian, at least at this holiday low-season, and as usual I drew some attention with my enormous 30kg backpack walking around the town. Otherwise I can fit in here quite well, in fact everyone would probably blend in here pretty well if they dressed like locals.

It feels like that Asia (the real Asia) is near. They are chinese merchants here and I met a Buryat woman who speaks chinese. Of some unknown reasons there were a couple of buses with signs in Korean.

Tomorrow I'm taking a 12-hour bus to Mongolia. It maybe a good thing, because I am getting tired of rude russian officials. On the train over here they checked my train ticket 4 times!

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Comments

[Sheng]

Ulan-ude
let me know about Ulan-ude and Buryats. Never heard of them before.

[Amire Komet]

comments
Hi Meng You have realy unusual comments on Ulan-Ude, I must say , I hoppe you are enjoning yourself there and meet many intressting pepole. I hoppe you find some of them attracitve, try to send a picture on them and you,re self to, i forgot har monoglian people look like. Her in Sweden is the weather very nice and shiney. I meet one of the gys from parship.se how live in Malmö on Nobeltroget. He is handsome, 194 cm tall, slim and very nice: P We whent to the town together and a nother day we whent to the casion whit his friend, all thougt he didn,t bye me a drik like you pay for the dinner last time :P then we when to a bar/disco near Prive and we danced together all three and his friend tought me how to dance "bugg" (in swedish) so i hoppe it will take me forward to the next date he he were we will eat thai food in a buffe. Okej i gotta go now and eat but i hope to hear from you soon again. Your friend Amire

[Mengan]

Buryats
Buryats are a mongolian people with population of 600 000, I think. They mainly live in Ulan Ude, but I think they are in Irkutsk and Ulan Baatar as well. They just look like mongolians, have the same religions (tibetan buddism and shamanism) but speak another dialect of mongolian. I talked to a mongolian girl and she said that when she communicates with buryats, she uses russian because many buryats don't speak the mongolian dialect anymore.

[Mengan]

Yeah.. You are addicated to Parship alright... Keep bugging.