Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

 The modern city out side my hotel window.

 One historical figure.

Chinggis Khaan (or Genghis Khan) Square.

 The opposite side where they are setting for the Nadaam Festival.

 A third side of the square.

I watched as several wedding parties had their photos taken in front of the statute. 

 The whole square.

People from different wedding parties in traditional dress.

The local high rise complexes behind my hotel.

Friday, June 29^th.

I woke up early with the sun shining in the room. I went and had the included breakfast in the hotel lobby restaurant and met a couple of woman who are on my tour. Then I spent most of the morning talking to family and trying to organize getting a car key to my mechanic so that he can get my car up and running before I get home. Then I spent a couple of hours updating the Korean part of the blog. At noon I had to change rooms because I have a room mate for the tour. Why they didn’t put me in a room with twin beds instead of a king last night I don’t know. That way he could have just joined me.

Anyway, where I went down I met other people on the tour and our guide Bukhbht, who seems like a really nice. He talked to me about completing an application for a visa to Canada as he is going to the GAdventure conference in Toronto in September. That is a good sign, because you have to be selected for that based on feedback from travellers.

I met my new roommate, Anthony from Alaska (he doesn’t say the US anymore because of Trump).

Then I went for a walk to find an ATM and to see Chinggis Khaan (or Genghis Khan) Square. I got the money no problem and spent an hour or so wandering around the square. There is a large statute of him seated in front of a building and I watched as several wedding parties went up to have their photos in front of it and then the whole party would pose on the stairs. Many of the people were wearing traditional colourful clothing.

Then I returned to the room to type of more of the blog and talk to Anthony. The group met up at 6:00 for our group meeting where we met everyone, except two people who have failed to show up yet. One woman is still waiting for her luggage. We are an older group, probably age 55+. We have one Kiwi, one Aussie, one Canadian, a couple of Brits and a bunch of Americans. We’ll see how it goes. The guide, Buhuu, is a wonderful 26-year old man. Then we went to dinner at a really nice Mongolian restaurant. The diet here is mostly meat, and they offered, sheep, goat, beef, horse and fish. There was a meal that came with the sheep head on the plate and another where the food was served in a sheep skull. I had a meatball dish with potatoes, carrots and glass noodles and a really look local dark beer. It is always interesting at these first dinners as people trying to get to know each other.

Update: It looks like I will not have wi-fi starting tomorrow and for most of the two-week trip. We are staying in remote locations. I learned that there are 1.4 million people in Ulaanbaatar, but only 3 million in the whole country. We will be staying in  the countryside or near small local villages in ger campsites. Gers are traditional Mongolian nomadic tents. Westerners call them yurts. I will continue to type up the trip and post it when I get a chance. So enjoy a couple of weeks of radio silence.