The Ovoo

I can't tell you exactly what an Ovoo is (or even how to pronounce it correctly), but I can tell you that what you're supposed to do is walk around it three times clockwise, pick up a stone (or leave another offering) and throw the stone onto the pile of stones and make a wish (thank you, Lonely Planet for those instructions!).  Sounds kind of ridiculous, but my wishes (I'm greedy, I made several) were something along the lines of get into law school (though I can't get in if I don't apply, and I haven't re-applied this year, so that was a wish wasted), and find a nice boyfriend, possibly even the man of my dreams.  Well, about two weeks later, I did meet a nice guy when I went to the ballet, and I think he is the most amazing person I've ever met.  I'm honestly not sure that I've ever been happier.  Is this the work of the Ovoo or is it merely a coincidence?  Whatever!  I'm just happy!

The State Department Store

Lonely Planet describes the State Department Store as worth a visit just to see how much stuff they have all crammed into one building, so I visited expecting an eclectic mix of mayhem, but I was disappointed.  It just had your standard department store shoes, clothes, et cetera, but not even the best selection.  On the top floor, there is a very miniature food court (think, three options) and a bookstore that carries only Mongolian books and a few ESL textbooks.  There's also a stationery shop, which is decent, but much more expensive than the little shops that are everywhere else on Peace Avenue.  There's a gym, too, so if you feel like being pervy, you can stand and watch the buffest Mongols working out.  All in all, the State Department Store kind of depresses me.  And I don't like going there because I always have the impression that the masses of people standing around in front of the store or just inside the entrance are trying to figure out the best method to get into my pockets.

Peace Bridge

Ugh.  This is another one of those pictures which I chose a long time ago, and, looking at it now, I can't understand why I chose it because today it just looks boring to me.  Maybe it will look much cooler with the black backdrop I've chosen for my blog, but still...

Anyway, I suppose I chose this picture to give you a better idea of what Ulaanbaatar looks like (because Lonely Planet didn't give me any clues-- just a bunch of landscape pictures, remember?).  This is Peace Bridge, which is South of the city centre.  I walk over Peace Bridge every time I go into the city centre, and you might read about it when you read about Ulaanbaatar (I know I had read about it before I got here), although, now that I look really closely at my map in my Lonely Planet, it's not actually marked on the map.  Oh well, it's not like the bridge really goes over any kind of body of water, the way bridges normally do.  To me, it's more of an overpass, although "Peace Overpass" does not have the same ring to it as "Peace Bridge" does.

Buildings in Ulaanbaatar

When I was deciding to move to Mongolia, of course I promptly bought my Bible, Lonely Planet, and I was super excited to see some pictures of what the place actually looked like, but in fact, Lonely Planet only had pictures of the countryside and, while Mongolia's countryside looks beautiful and everything, I get tired of looking at even my own landscape pictures, let alone countless photographs of someone else's landscape pictures.  I tried looking up in the LP for a description of architecture in Mongolia, but there was not much there, maybe a few lines to say that many of the old monasteries had been destroyed during Stalin's purges and that the architecture here was "boring" (my interpretation, not LP's actual words).  One of the building was described as "salmon-pinkish", which, now that I've seen it, is indeed salmon pinkish in colour, but it's much more than that.  It's got big columns (Corinthian? Doric? Ionic?  I'll have to take a closer look next time) and big wooden doors, two big concrete lions, and I think it's a genuinely interesting building to look at, despite its unfortunate colour (there are at least three salmon pinkish buildings in Ulaanbaatar-- maybe they got a big discount on stucco that colour).  Other building features which have caught my eye are the mosaics you will see on the sides of some very old communist-era apartment buildings, like the one in this picture.

Bookstores (oh, and porn, too)

I like reading.  I like reading so much that I will often gobble down two or three novels or big books a week about anything, ranging from health, economics, science, psychology, travelogues, etc.  Naturally, one of the first things I did when I arrived in Ulaanbaatar was track down all of the bookstores listed in my Lonely Planet.  Let me just say that the selection of books here is even more dismal than LP made it out to be.  The first bookstore I visited ("Books in English"), had a disappointing, tiny selection of out-of-date magazines (like, I mean, from 1996!) and extremely used books that weren't even particularly interesting, anyway.  The next bookstore I visited was not much better, but that was actually okay because I still had two more bookstores to visit.  Librairie Papillon is listed as UB's finest bookstore, although most of the selection is in French.  That's actually okay, because I can read French.  It's my second language.  I was kind of looking forward to reading French books this winter and improving my French vocabulary and grammar from all the French I planned on reading.  But when I got to Librairie Papillon, I found that, while Lonly Planet was correct in asserting that this is possibly UB's greatest bookstore, the selection is still pretty abysmal.  Yes, there were books in French, but the selection was not as great as what Lonely Planet made it out to be.  The wall of German books looked about as interesting as the French selection (actually, possibly even more interesting-- but that might be only because I couldn't understand half of the titles in the German section).  There was also a backroom full of cheap classics in English (you all know the kind-- they've got navy blue covers and they cot about 5-10bucks, but if you can help it, you probably usually buy a nicer-looking edition from a different publisher with slightly bigger, more reader-friendly fonts).  Let me say, I was disappointed with this one as well.  There was one final bookstore to check out, Xanadu.  LP said that this one had a small selection, and that it also carried a small selection of LP titles.  When I arrived, I found that Xanadu does, in fact, carry a selection of LP titles, but they're mostly all out-of-date (by one or two editions!), and if you're interested in reading anything other than travel guides, if you're shopping at Xanadu, you'd better be /really/ interested in books about Mongolian history and culture, cause that's all there is!!  Thank god (lower-case /g/, intentional) my younger brother bought me a Sony bookreader for Christmas-- I guess I'll finally be making use of that.  And I miss my old bookstore that I used to frequent in Seoul-- What the Book-- I used to go there just to breathe in the smell of books and look at all the knowledge and stories I have yet to read!

I did find one other bookstore in Ulaanbaatar, although it wasn't listed in the Lonely Planet.  I don't really understand why it isn't listed, because it's a hella cool bookstore.  It's called the "Mega Hi-Fi Store" or, alternatively, "The Original Bookstore" and it's on Seoul Street.  This store has a better selection of books, although they're entirely in Mongolian.  Actually, they do have a small selection of guidebooks (you know the kind that are full of glossy, colour pictures and 3D-type maps that are really pretty to look at, but not terribly practical to actually bring traveling with you), but they were not Lonely Planets (this, I suspect, is why this bookstore is not listed in the LP).  It also carries a few copies of Time and Newsweek (although, the last time I went there, I noticed that at the top of the Times, there was printed "Subscriber Copy-- not for resale"), but what I found much more interesting was the Mongolian porn.  I'm not a pervert or anything, but I had to stop to take a photo of the Mongolian porn.  Then, I had to flip through, and I found some totally awesome porn cartoons (like what you would find in the newspaper, but, you know, porn).  Then, I sucked it up and bought a couple of copies to send to my bro for Christmas.  It was kind of awkward, because it was very male-oriented porn, and I'm definitely a woman, and I didn't explain that it was for my brother because I didn't think the girl would understand me or believe me, and anyway, buying porn for your brother in kind of creepy in its own right.  I only bought two magazines and each magazine is worth 2500 Tugrugs, which is about $1.95 in Canadian money!