Latest / bit of a Rambler / 140 Ramble On

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140 Ramble On · bit of a Rambler

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Kai, and I am a bit
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of a rambler. So moving off from China, getting into
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: some Mongolia action, a few things to close up from China.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I think I mentioned my last dinner with Terry, but
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I also got my last dinner with Sean. He was
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the one who introduced me to that toy row, which
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: is cut with bone, like a small strip of bones,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: so it's a little bit crunchy after the bone is boiled.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: It must be cartilage, though, because if it was just
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: a shaving of bone, it would be so difficult to
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: eat even after it was boiled or cooked. Boy, if
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: anybody knows what toy row is, tell me. I really
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: thought everybody said bone, but I don't know how much
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: sense that makes. Anyway, it was delicious, so I took
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Sean to a place with really good toy row gongoa
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: toyro so stir fried dry, stir fried with a bunch
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: of spices. The first time I had it was perfect.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's like one of the best dishes I've ever had.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: But then when I took Sean, of course they screwed
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: up the order and I was like, no, it was
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: still eight out of ten. But after you've had ten
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: out of ten, and I want to show my friend
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the ten out of ten. Eight out of ten was
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: somewhat lackluster. But you know what, as Gloria Gaynor said,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I will survive. It was still a really fun dinner.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: And Sean has a baby and a family, so he
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: has not really gone wild and got real drunk in
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a very long time, according to him, four years. But
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I remember getting drunk with him, I believe a couple
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: of years ago or well whatever. Anyway, this time we
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: did get very, very drunk, and I think I scared
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: him because I was dodging mopeads running to the restaurant.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And he's so used to watching his kid that when
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: he's around anybody else, Sean is dad mode and he's
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: always very protective. So I noticed him being a little
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: more worried about people going into the road. And yeah,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: he's a good dad. He protects his kid, and now
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: he has dad brain. That's just what happens when you
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: have a kid, as far as I understand. And we
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: had to run across the street a couple times and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: get some more beer, and he was very excited, and
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: we went to the craft beer place and ate some
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: yak Jerkey and had a couple brews there as well.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: We just had a big old hog while beer night
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: with the boys and it was a lot of fun.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: And then after that, that's when I talked that crazy
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: creep for ten more hours, just drinking more beer all
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: night like a crazy person. And then I went to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the second Frog dinner with Terry. Wow, what a crazy
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: goofball I can be. So thank you Sean, Thank you Terry.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Oh and I should mention I'm an idiot because I
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: made sure to charge my USBC plugin adapter and the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: microphone Bluetooth MIC so that I could do interviews with
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: both Sean and Terry. But maybe I drink too much
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: beer or whatever. Every time I thought about interviewing them,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, I got to bring my MIC,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and then I just didn't bring it and I went
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and hung out with them. It would have been difficult anyway,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: because I was We were all with Sean. It was
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: always him and his family, so it would have been
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: difficult to interview him. I could have done at the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: last dinner maybe, but I don't know how fun that
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: would be. I was only there for a couple of weeks,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: so we were having too much fun hanging out. I
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: don't know if I could have got either of them
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: alone for an interview, but yeah, sorry about that. I
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: definitely planned on having at least Terry because he's he
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't have a kid, so I knew he'd have a
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: little more time. And then I figured I would be
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: able to get Sean for like fifteen minutes and get
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: a small interview. But I'm too dumb and I don't
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: plan anything. So I'm thinking I might just call them
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: up and have them send me our recorded call and
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: then we'll just do like a little interview that way,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: because I want to start doing interviews on this thing.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I want to have some other people talking. Do you
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: think that sounds good or do you just love listening
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: to this single monotonous tone of my voice? Hey, if
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you like it, I mean more people. The numbers are
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: going up, downloads are going up. I'm not getting even
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: twenty downloads a day, I don't think, but it's a
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: lot higher than I used to be perfectly frank with you. You
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: got used to get it like a couple of day,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: and now it's I got like one hundred the other day.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: But I think that's flu I think AI is just
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: downloading these things, but yeah, ten listeners and then real
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: people are writing in, so I know I'm connecting with
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: a couple of people, and I'm really glad to hear
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: from you. I do. It's a lot of fun doing
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: this too. I'm sure I'm gonna have fun looking back
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: on these or sharing these stories with people, no matter
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: what comes of it. I thought about writing a book,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: but it's just not that doesn't sound that doesn't sound
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: as much fun. And I don't want to do a
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: video channel because that sounds like way more work. But
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: telling stories it's what I do. You know, I just
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: told you how I hung out with someone I didn't
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: even like, talking for ten hours and drinking beer with them.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Apparently I just like blabbing, Okay. So then I went
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: to the biggest airport in the world because I had
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: to get to Mongolia. It's the first time I left
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: from Beijing Dashing Airport, which I knew about, but I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: never had a flight leaving from there and to Mongolia.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: A bunch of flights go from Dashing and back to Dashing.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: So for a long time, Beijing International was the main airport,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Pecking Airport, and that's in the far far north east
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: of the city. I have been to that airport more
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: times than I account. Probably one hundred times. No, lie, like,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: probably close to one hundred, I would but yeah, probably
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: close to one hundred times because I did a lot
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: of visa runs from that airport back in the day,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and then I also went through Beijing. Every time I
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: visited countries through Asia, I would fly through Beijing. So
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: maybe one hundred times, which is wild to think about.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: But dashing a new airport twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, something
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: fairly new, and it's the biggest airport in the world apparently,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and it didn't feel like the biggest airport in the world.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: But I don't know. That's what the online sources say,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: So who am I to disbelieve them, except clearly I
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: don't trust them. It's a very nice airport, and it
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: was shockingly empty. There was maybe that's because it was
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: so big now it was. It was very well organized,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: it was very clean, and it was very sparsely populated.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: It there wasn't a ton of people inside. There was
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: still plenty of people. It's a major airport, but it
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: just wasn't really crowded most of the time. So I
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: just went upstairs, put down my pack, laid down and
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: took a nap until my plane was ready for checking.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Oh I did, okay. I met a girl who cosplays
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: different anime characters the last night before China, and I
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: can't even remember. She worked at a shop and we
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: started talking and then she was like, yeah, I cosplay
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: things because I know she had like cool gloves or
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: something I can't remember. And then she showed me some
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: objects and that's her, that's her thing. She likes to cosplay,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: and she's she looked cool. She looked pretty good at it.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: She had like a street fighter thing and other stuff. Anyway,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: back at the airport, because I'm on my way to Mongolia,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and when I go to a place, I like to
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: learn the language of wherever I'm going, whichever country I
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: go to, and my usual way to do that is
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: to find the best app for learning that language and
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: then study the language. So recently, uh, dual Lingo for
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Me has been back on track, so I've started using
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: dual Lingo again. They ruined their app completely with AI
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: for I didn't use them for over half a decade,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I think over five years, but I liked the Japanese
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: course recently, so I started using that and I use
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: other ones too, Like when I went to Australia, I
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: had to learn like diet Snake from the Diet Snake app.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. There's no dirt Snake app, but that
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: would be funny if there was an Australian accent app.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: I bet that there's got to be right. There probably
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: is an accent app. But Dulingo does not have Mongolian,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, weird, okay, that happened in
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: plenty of like they didn't have Thaie I think it
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: was or No, they have Vietnamese, which maybe it was Thai.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: They didn't have some very popular East Asian language that
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I was surprised by, and so I had to find
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: a specific app made by someone from that country. So
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: if I don't have one on the main app dual
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Lingo like I usually use, I'll just learn different things
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and if there's no resources, then I will just use
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the dictionary. But there's resources for every language these days
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: except Mongolian. I was shocked. I downloaded every single app.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: There were about twenty different apps, and the only one
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: that taught Mongolian at all was Ling and their curriculum
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: is well, it's not free. First of all, you have
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: to purchase a bunch of levels. And it did seem good,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: but I know also that Ling is completely AI made,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and I just didn't expect it to be super useful,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: so I ended up I don't even I didn't even
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: get a dictionary. None of the dictionaries had audio. There
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: was no audio pronunciation. Even Lin didn't have all of them,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and that was clearly AI. It was. It's weird. It's weird.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I guess it makes sense, there's only three million people
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: in the country and it's the only country that speaks Mongolian.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: But I was pretty shocked that nothing. None of the
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: dictionaries have audio recordings, so I couldn't even look up
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: a word and pronounce it, or like hear it pronounced,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: because if it's romanized phonetics, it doesn't make any sense.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Like Google Translate does not have any audio pronunciation. So
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: there's a word and it's spelled b a yaar la laa,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: so that sounds like by our la la, but that's wrong.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: And it's even written like that in Mongolian. But that's
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: not how anybody says it. It's bayer Schlach, which is
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: the l sound, and then you breathe around your tongue
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: while touching the tip of your tongue up on the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: roof of your mouth, and that's the approximation I can get.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I haven't gone to any language schools here. I just
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: learned a couple of words so I could say or
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: biersta like thank you, goodbye. Very basic stuff. But I
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: was shocked that Google Translate doesn't have audio. None of
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: the Mongolian English dictionaries have audio for me to listen
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: to the audio at all, and the writing in Mongolian
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and in Romanized English do not correspond to the pronunciation
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: of many many of the words, like most of the words,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I completely I just stopped using them. I used YouTube
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: to learn like the top ten words neg means one,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: so I have like a few words, and I started
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: studying the cyrillic alphabet, the Mongolian cyrillic alphabet, so that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I could read some stuff. But it's very surprising that
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: there are zero audio resources for Mongolian aside from like
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a few YouTube videos, but even those are extremely sparse
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and very basic fundamental. Everyone here did seem happy when
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I can say bishlaut or biotish style or whatever they
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: do like that. I'm trying to speak it. But there's
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: really that's as far as I can go. I can
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: just say hello, sambanu and goodbye and thank you, and
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: then a couple numbers and some odd words here and there, kushur,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: this great pastry here that I like, savory pastry, delicious,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: kim chi and yak meat. Okay, I'm at the biggest
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: airport in the world, and I discover that I can
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: not study Mongolian, so that really irritates me. And after
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: going through every single app available for learning Mongolian and
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: not finding a single one that provides audio pronunciations, I
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: shrug my shoulders and say, hey man, that's life, because
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: you know what it is, and sometimes you just don't
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: have the resources you need. And if this was thirty
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: years ago, I wouldn't even have apps. There would be
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: no I'd have a pocket dictionary that was completely with
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: all these spelling errors that don't coordinate to the spoken language.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: YouTube wouldn't be a thing. I wouldn't have anything. So
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: you know, at least I had a couple basic words,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: and I'll be able. I've studied plenty of languages before
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: I'll get to study languages again. I'm going to study
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Korea when I go to Korea, and I'm going to
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: study Japanese again for the fifth time when I go
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: to Japan. I'm plenty fortunate. I shouldn't be complaining, but
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I really wanted to study Mongolian because it's cool and
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: this is a cool country and these are cool stylish people.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Mongolians are very stylish, and they have tons of restaurants
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: from Korea here, so I'm wondering if they're like influenced
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: by Korea. But they don't wear a ton of makeup.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: It looks like the girls are starting to wear some
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: sort of makeup tutorial makeups, but it's not very popular here,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: and they're they're Their dress here is like like motorcycle
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: club chic. It's like very tough and cool and not
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: super delicate, and delicate is a good way, like the
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: South Korean generally is. Oh wait, there's one other thing
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: from China. It looks like that. I is this the
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: wrong No, it's mostly in order. There's just one Beijing
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: thing that was not in order for some weird reason.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Oh you know what, there's two things because right before
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I left, I talked to someone in a park I
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: just hung out and then she said I made her
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: feel open minded and I was like, yeah, cool, dude.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: High five. Travelers help people feel open minded a lot.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I hear that a lot, so that's always nice to hear.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: You know, did I say that last week? I can't remember. Okay, wait,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: there is this last thing. So before I left Bangkok,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I was talking to this girl in the hostel and
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: at first she was very excited to hear about traveling,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: and then she just said, yeah, but you're so lucky
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: because the US dollar's worth so much. And I was like, well,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: you're a corporate lawyer, so you probably make a lot
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: more money than I do. And she said, yeah, but
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: you have USD, so it's worth more. I was like,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: well not really. If you have the equivalent that I have,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: like more equivalent money than I do, then you have
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: more even if you only have M and B. She's like, yeah,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: but redmen B is worthless. I was like, no, six
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: of them are one USD. So if you have one
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: thousand remnant B and I only have fifty dollars US,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: you'll have much more because fifty US is only three
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: hundred remen b and she was like, yeah, but with
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: fifty US you can buy five thousand remnen b. And
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I realized that she didn't understand foreign currency, like the
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: exchange rate. She didn't she didn't get that. She was
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: just like, you have magic currency because it's from the US,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: which I do hear occasionally. There are people, especially from
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: China that have that mindset. It's not super common, but
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: it does happen. But I was kind of surprised because
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: she seemed very highly educated. She spoke fluent English. She
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: was a native so she was like fluently bilingual and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: seemed very smart, and also worked with international clients, so
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: you would think she'd understand the okay, So I thought
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: that was weird enough, and then she got a little
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: irritated about that, but I just moved on and I
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: showed her some receipts. She was like, well, how can
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: you live on five hundred US dollars a month? And
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: I showed her. I was like, well, I stayed in
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: this hostel, it's one hundred US dollars per month, and
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: then that's with utilities and Wi Fi, so I have
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: four hundred extra dollars the rest of the month. To
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: eat food, or rent a bike and go somewhere, or
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: buy swimming gear or whatever. Just do whatever I want.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: And she's like, ah, because it's USD and I was like, no, no, no,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: not because USD, because it's four hundred USD equivalent in
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Thailand or whatever. And things are cheap. Things are cheaper
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: in low cost countries, like China's food is much cheaper
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: than US food. But you can go to Thailand and
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: some of their products will be even cheaper than some
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: of the products in China. And she's like, well, I've
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: only been to Bank. I haven't been to Thailand yet.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, Bangkok is the capital of Thailand,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: so you have been to Thailand. And she gave a
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: very haughty laugh and said, no, I went to Bangkok
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the country. I have not been to Thailand. And she
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: was getting pissed at this point, and I was like, ah,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Bangkok is the capital of Thailand, so you've
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: been to Thailand. And she was like, well, who knows.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're right, Maybe you're right, and I was like,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, I mean we have phones a weekend, just
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: check real quick. And then she was like, anyway, I
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: have to go and left. I have met plenty of
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: people in China my six and whatever year's living there
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: and visiting, and even in other countries. If someone's speaking Mandarin,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I like to talk to them and then they're like, oh,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: you speak Mandarin and we have a conversation. I met
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: plenty of people. This the the lack of awareness about
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the wider world around. This international business lawyer was bowled
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: me over. I was very surprised at the turn this
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: conversation went. I don't know, and plenty of I know
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: plenty of Chinese people who have been to Bangkok. I've
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: never met one who thought Bangkok was a separate country
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: than Thailand. That is remarkable, even just the size of Bangkok.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: How looking at a map it says capital. I was
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: amazed that anyone could think that was a separate country.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I'm so curious how that happened, especially since she was there.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: She lived there for like a month for a business trip,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and somehow it just it skipped her awareness that Bangkok
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: was part of Thailand. And lawyer anyway, weird. Thanks lawyer girl.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: It was an interesting talk brought into my mind. Okay,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: we're almost in Mongolia, folks, so I am on the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: plane and I'm waiting for someone to sit next to me,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: and you know, you just have luck. Sometimes they're cool,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: sometimes they're not. And this girl walked up and sat
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: down next to me, and she was cute, and I
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: looked over and then I was like, wait a minute,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I know what that is. That's a jalaba. I said
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: that in my head because I don't know this person
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: and I don't want to be a creepy guy on
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a plane. But she was wearing something I haven't seen
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: in over a decade, probably whenever I was in Morocco.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: That must be ten years ago. Wait, that's not who
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: knows close to ten years ago. We'll say, I'm not
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: good with time. This girl sat down and I saw it,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: and it could have been some other dress from another
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Middle Eastern country. But I owned a jalaba for the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: three months I was living in Morocco, so I was
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: pretty comfortable, like recognizing the style of dress. And jelaba
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: looks like you know those jaua in Star Wars in
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the movie, they buy R two D
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: two and they sell him back to the guy. They're
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: wearing those like big cloaks with big hoods. And big sleeves.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: That's kind of what a jealaba looks like, except jaalaba's
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: are usually brighter colors or lines like gold decorating lines.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: They look super cool and they're very comfortable and they
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: completely block you from the sun. So I got one
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: of those, and I went around Morocco Marrakesh, and everybody
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: was happy to see a foreigner trying on their dress.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And everybody said Ali Baba because I had a beard,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and apparently Ali Baba had a beard, and if you
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: have a beard, then you are ali Baba if you're
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: visiting Marrakesh. And I would always say Ali Baba jelaba.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: So I'm very I know about jalava's. I at least
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: know the name and the look of a jalava so so,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and before we took off, I was like, that's a jalaba.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Probably I'll ask her later. But I don't like talking
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to people on a plane in general, especially once they
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: find out I'm a traveler, because if they're interested, then
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: now I am. I am in my chair and I
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: just have to field every question and sometimes there are
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of them, and this has happened. I've been
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: on like a six hour flight and someone is just
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: talking and I'm like, I just gotta answer, you just
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: gotta answer these questions. I'm pretty good at shutting a
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: conversation down if I don't want to. But I'd rather
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: not have to do that. Better never begin, So I
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: didn't talk to her. I figured i'd just asked her later.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: And we went through the flight, and every time there
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: was the slightest thing of turbulence, she pulled out a Koran.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I think she was trying to be surreptitious, which I get.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are plenty of parts of the world,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the US, of course, and a lot of Western Europe
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: that are very uncomfortable with Muslims, and I think she
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: was just trying to not draw attention to herself. But
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: then again, she was wearing a very stylish jalaba, which
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: is a very distinctive gown robe cloak cloak robe, and
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: she kept praying. She kept saying the prayer, one of
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the prayers to Allah, whenever the plane shook a little bit,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: and she'd just bow her head down and say the
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: prayer and then come back up and bow her head
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: say the prayer. Every every time it happened, and we
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: were on a plane to Mongolia, so there's high winds
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and there's there was clouds and all that, so it
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: was shaking a little bit, but anytime it shook at all, man,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: she probably did that prayer fifty times for that two
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: hour ride, and hey, it worked. We got to Lampatah,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: So thanks jalava girl, which I know because on our
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: way in, I was like, Hey, is that a jalaba?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: She's like yeah. I was like, it looks good. It
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: looks really cool. And her accent was North American. She
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: sounded like she was from the US, and we exchanged
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: a couple pleasantries. I was kind of perplexed though she
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: was almost the only other person on this flight with
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: me to Mongolia, but whatever, I didn't care that much.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And then we landed. I was just interested in the jalaba,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and then I wanted to ask her about the Quran
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: because it had pinion romanized pronunciation under the prayers and everything.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: So she must have recently got into Islam because she
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: had to phonetically sound out all of the Arabic letters
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: using Romanized letters, and I was very curious what she
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: was going to do in Mongolia. We talked about Morocco
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: a bit and I mentioned chef Sha and she liked Fez,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the only dangerous city I've ever been to. She loved
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Fez apparently, So that was great to hear, because I
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: that's the first good thing, like from a person who's
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: been there, especially a girl. That is the first time
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: I've heard someone going to that city and complimenting it.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: So maybe she's gone recently and it's radically changed since
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: I was there ten years ago, or maybe she was
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: in Mosques, or maybe she has family there, or maybe
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: she's a different circumstance, but that was nice to hear,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: all right. And now I'm in Flip in Mongolia, and
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: the first thing that happens I find out that my
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: no fee travel credit card doesn't work, and I was like,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: that's weird because it works everywhere in the world. And
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: the ticket lady looked confused too, and I didn't. I
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: tried to look at it to see what went wrong,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: but it's all written in Mongolian cyrillic, so I'm like, well,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I have no idea. I'll probably figure that out later,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and I did. It turns out that even though it
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: says visa and I have a visa, golumpt Bank is
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: a popular local bank in Mongolia does not work with
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: my visa card. Every other bank in Mongolia works with
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: my visa card except Golumpt Bank. And there's TDB and
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Hassbank and Handbank, and I've tried all of them and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: they all work fine. But there's something wrong with Golumpt.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if it's all visa cards. But
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: if you head there and your card doesn't work in
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: a place, try another place with a different looking card reader.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: The card readers are different styles based on which bank
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: produces the card reader, So if you're a Mongolia and
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: your card doesn't work, try another store with a card
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: reader that looks different than the one your card was
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: declined on. Because apparently some of the banks aren't tied
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: into the international credits system, so they don't work with
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: international cards, is what I'm thinking. But that's okay. I
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: transfer like thirty bucks US and cash, and turns out
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: that's a ton of money. I thought. I really thought
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I only had like ten bucks left of my Japanese yen.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: That's all I used. Actually I just used the leftover
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Japanese yen, and I really didn't think I had that much,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: But I got like two hundred thousand two Greek, which
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: is the Mongolian currency, and that was ten times as
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: much as I expected to get. I thought I was
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: gonna get twenty thousand, which I knew was enough to
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: take the airport limousine into the city, and then he
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: gave me two hundred thousand, and I was like, I
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: don't know whatever. I took it. Obviously, it's a big
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: stack of cash. And I waited for the bus and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: then I got straight on as soon as it showed up.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And then we had to just sit there for forty
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: five minutes until left. Took forty five more minutes to
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: into the city. But it was interesting because it's a
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: new country. It was late, it's already midnight. I'm excited
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: to be in a new country. And everyone's speaking Mongolian,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: which is such an interesting language. It's like halfway Chinese,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: halfway Russian. There's a lot of aspirants like that. But
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: it's a little guttural, very cool language. I like languages.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: All languages are cool, but I do like some languages
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: more and Mongolians very interesting to me. I wish I
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: could have studied it, but oh well I can't. So
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I get into the city. I get off at Zukbatar Square,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: which is the main square of the city, and all
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: of a sudden I realized how tiny ulan Batara is.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Like I had heard people told me that it was
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: too it was a very difficult city to walk around.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: And I have no idea what they're talking about, because
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: it takes I don't know, it takes maybe two hours
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: to walk from the extreme north to the extreme south
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: of the city, and it would probably take five hours
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: to walk from the west to the east of the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: city just strolling down the street. If you're driving a car,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: it would be like ten minutes northwest and twenty minutes
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: east east west north south east west. I mean it's
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and it's all completely flat. Oh no, Actually, the north
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: of the city does go up in elevation, but it's
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: largely flat. It's a pretty flat city overall, so it's
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: definitely walkable. It's easy as heck. I got from the
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: middle of suck Wotar Square to the far southeast walking
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: at a brisk pace because it was chilly. And you
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: never know with Airbnb, the map might be wrong. Maybe
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: you'll have to search around for a while to find
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: it doesn't happen a lot, but I was just thinking.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: So I was walking at a brisk pace, and I
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: think maybe it took me one hour to get to that.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking like forty five minutes. It really was a
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: pretty easy walk to get to the apartment. I found
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: it right away. It's a nice little spot. I'm digging it.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: I stopped on the way and got some horse jerky
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: and some yak jerky from a convenience store, got a
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: couple of beers, got like a sandwich or something just
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: to try, like the local snack food they have in
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the convenience stores, and it was it was good. It
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: was The meat is incredibly high quality. I'll say that
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the meat here always super fresh, probably because it's cold
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: temperature and the air is really dry. But all the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: meat is so fresh here, and I really liked it.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: But it's so fresh and so like real. The meat
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: is so real that it's almost too rich, especially the
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: yak meat, but I love it. I'm definitely into yak meat.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: I was just surprised at how not but how sated
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I felt after a few bites of this yak jerkey.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't finish at all. I brought more than half
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: of the pack home with me, which shocked me because
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I can eat jerky for okay. Also, this wasn't completely
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: dry jerky. It was slightly moist jerky, and I don't
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: like that as much as really dry jerky. But I
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: was glad. I walked into a store on the first
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: thing I see is horse jerky, yak jerky, and a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: row of beer. And I was like, well, I guess
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I know what I'm doing to celebrate, celebrate, to celebrate
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Ma and now Carroll visit to Mongolia. And it was good.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So I walked down, got into my room, passed the
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: f out. And then the next day I thought, okay,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: this is the first real day, so you get to
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: have one more beer before you take a little break.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: And I went down to the supermarket. And there's a
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: great supermarket, and as I've stayed here longer, I found
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: out it's one of the best super markets, not even
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: a five minute walk from my building, and there's only
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: two of them in the city, or not many of them,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: and it was very close. So I went inside. And
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I love looking around supermarkets and seeing all the different
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: foods and the different the different things that are normal
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: in each country. Each country is like, well, yeah, of
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: course we have dried pitted plums. That's everybody loves dry
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: pitted plums. But you're not going to find that in
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: every country. That's just like commonly like real fruit. It
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: turns out they have a lot of dehydrated food here.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: It's a big thing, which I kind of knew that
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: they do preserve meat and preserve a lot of things
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: in Mongolia traditionally because they're nomads. But there's a lot
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: of dried fruits and dried meats that you can get
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: in this country, which I like because I like dehydrated
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: food a lot. And after I'm walking around looking at stuff,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: I see this guy at a chicken shop and for
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: some reason it sounds good to me, so I walk
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: over and say hey, and he talks and fluent English,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: and i'm because he's the first person I think who
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: speaks English that well. I find out that they don't
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: teach English in every school in Ulambatar. It's not super common,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: so people don't. Yeah, people don't learn English growing up
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: in Mongolia. Apparently by default, some do some so another
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: person told me that they all schools teach English. But
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that was the only person that told me that another
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: ten people told me that they don't teach English in schools,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: so I think that person maybe just wanted me to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: think better of the country. But I don't judge anyone
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: for not teaching English in their schools. Anyway, this guy
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: great English. Oh my god, I should have freaking interviewed him.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: What is wrong with me? Okay, maybe I'll do that.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: That's so funny. I've gone back a few times and
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: their chicken shop is closed down right now, Okay, I
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: meet this kid. Kid is cool. His name is boyn On.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: He has three scholarships. He's called Age's gonna go to
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: university soon and he can go to China, South Korea,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: or Japan. And I was like, man, have you got
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: to China. It's gonna be the best food in the world.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: And then he was like yeah, but I'm really sensitive
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: to smells. And I was like, then you probably don't
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: want to go to China because they're of those three countries,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: China's smells are the strongest. And he's like, especially body odor,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and I was like, that's another red flag. If you're
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: on one of those subways, you're gonna run into a
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: couple people with body odor and He told me he
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: used to work at a Mongolian restaurant here and he
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: could smell Chinese people when they went into his restaurant,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and that's I know, you're if you're a US person,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: you're like, what, that's racist. That's how people talk in
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: other countries. There's not there's no veneer of civility or
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: non bigotry in most other countries in the world, including Europe.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: In most countries, you don't you don't get the you
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: don't get the cultural attitude that you shouldn't judge a
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: book by its cover. So that's a very common thing
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to hear from any country. Chinese people say similar things
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: about Japanese people. Japanese people say it about Koreans. Everybody
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: has their opinion, well, Japanese people because they're so polite.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: But oh, actually, you know what, No, I know a
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Japanese guy and he definitely complained about Chinese people the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: whole time, just how dirty everything in China was, So
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: you will get that's very common. That's just blunt like thing.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: And that's what he told me. And I was like, eh, well,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I have friends there and they're not all smelly. He's
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: like yeah, but usually they're so smelly. I was like, okay,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: and then I talked about South Korea and I was like,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: it sounds like you want South Korea. Japan's a little uptight,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: they're not super happy all the time because they have
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: to work so much, and they're very detail oriented. So
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: if you want, if you just want to fund the
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: best experience, probably South Korea. And he likes Korean. He's
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: interested in the language, he likes the music, and he's
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: it seems the dramas. It seems like that's where he's
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: leaning anyway. But he's still gonna go on a trip,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: very brave. He's going to go to Beijing, check out China,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: which he's gonna hate because the air smells bad in Beijing,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: and then he's gonna go to South Korean. Then he's
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: going to go to Japan and then bounce back to
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Mongolia after make his decision. I'm betting it's going to
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: be South Korea. But he was a nice guy to
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: talk to and it was really interesting. We talked for
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: a while, maybe twenty five minutes, and I ordered so oh,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: there's so many Korean restaurants and there's so much Korean
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: chicken here, So I ordered some Korean fried chicken from him.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Soy garlic, but it's still really sweet. But it was
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: good and he cooked it good, and we talked about
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: recipes for good Korean chicken and I was like, I
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: don't know, but you gotta fry it twice. And he's like,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: it's not my restaurant. They won't let me. All right,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: was study boy. And then I get the chicken. Oh.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: I told him that I wasn't gonna eat chicken because
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: I usually don't eat that early in the day. And
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: then I walked by the beer section and there was
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: like fifty beers to choose from, and I was like, well,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: and I grabbed a beer and went back and I
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, I got to try this beer, so
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I'm going to need some fried chicken with that. And
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: he was like great and fried me had some soy
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: girl like fried chicken. I said, bon voyage to the fella. Oh,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: they cook it fresh too, relatively, you know, it's a
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: fast food thing. But he cooked it right there. So
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: it took ten minutes. But then got my beer, got
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: my chicken, said goodbye to study Boy, and went out
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: the door checked out, and I just sat down outside
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: on a bench and ate, and within a minute a
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: homeless dude walked up and started speaking Mongolian, and I
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: was like sorry. He said where are you from, and
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: he said a couple things in very broken English, and then,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: without caring what my answer was, he just pointed to
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the beer I was drinking, and I was like, yep,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: it's good. I like it so far. And then he
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: pointed at it again and then pointed at himself aggressively,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: and it clearly could only mean give me that beer,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: and I said nope, I'm drinking this, and then he
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: nodded and he said okay, and then he just sat
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: next to me while I ate my chicken and drank
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: my beer. And when there was like, I don't know,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: a few centimeters of beer at the bottom, I gave
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: him the beer and he seemed very happy and he
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: drank it right away. I hear alcoholism is a problem here,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: so I decided not to drink outside after that, because
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: because that was fast. I saw him crossing the street
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: and I could tell he was already belining toward me,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: and then he did. He came right across the street,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: over the sidewalk into the store area on the bench
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: and was like beer. I want beer, so I'll call
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: it was probably, And they like vodka here a lot too.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I don't want to drink vodka. I don't want to.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: I just want a chill. I just want to chill.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I have some chicken and beer. But I was I
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: was also thinking, like this guy's life. Probably, it doesn't
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: look like it's great. He's not gonna not drink beer
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: because I don't give him the last of my beer
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: that I don't want anyway, just give him the beer.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: So I gave him the rest of my beer, and
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: he seemed very happy for it. I think he said
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: thank you, or maybe he said bierschla or something, or
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: maybe he just drank it. I can't remember. It's my
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: first day in Ulambatar. I'm going I'm gonna walk around.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: See the first thing I do in a new city
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: is walk all around and find out a little alleys
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: and figure out all the cool stuff to check out.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: And I was already having an interesting day. And did
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I get my phone the first day? Let me check?
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: You know what I might I have? And I didn't
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: write that down. That was interesting because I walked into
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: there's a couple main places here. There's Mobycom, which is
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: the one I eventually got, and then the bigger one
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: that I tried to go to I can't remember, Unitel maybe,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: and I went in there and there was fifty people.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: It was just packed, and I was like, nope, I'll
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: just walk to outside of the city and find a
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: tiny shop in stet And then I walked outside and
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: literally next door upp a flight of stairs was Mobycom,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, might as well check. I
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: walk in there and there's three people, three customers. It's
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the newer telecommunications network, so maybe people like the Unitel
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: one and that's why. But I walked in and this
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: girl saw me walk in and then looked back down
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: at her computer, just like I don't want to talk
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: to anybody, just shut up and leave. I found out
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: that's just how people kind of are here. They're an aggressive,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: insular people. They're very nice if you talk to them,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: and they're very cool, but it's just like they don't
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: like work. Nobody likes work, and they're independent and badass,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: so they're like, I don't have to like work either,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: like in Japan, they don't like to work. But it's
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: like it's a thing, it's part of their culture, Mongolia
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: is Mongolian people are like, yeah, I'll work if I
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: want to get off my back, which rings real true
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: for this guy. So I saw her do that, but
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I needed a SIM card, so I walked over and
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: I said hey in my stupid tourist voice, and she
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: looked up, and she looked up and literally rolled her
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: eyes aside very quickly realize hello. And I was like, hey,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: just looking for a SIM card. She's like, uh, we
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: have SIM cards. It's like, great, thank you. Which ones
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: can I get? And she like but grudgingly pulled out
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: a full full or she like tapped on the and
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: then turned the screen toward me and she's like we
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: have this and this and this. How long are you here?
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: And I was like one month. She's like, oh, that's cool,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: so you're visiting, and she like warmed up a little
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: bit and we had that nice little exchange of a
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: few sentences, and then as soon as I chose a planet,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: it was like that one She's like, okay, and she
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: got like she must hate doing the actual job. It
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: was okay when we talked a little bit, like I
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: got a couple smiles, but mostly she just looked like
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: she wanted to put a gun to her head every
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: time she had to tap into her her telecom system,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: which maybe the job sucked, I don't know, or maybe
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: that's why there's only three people, three customers in that shop,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: because she was like, just leave me alone. Boy did
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: she have that. She looked very professional, she clean, like
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: straight back hair, a nice blazer. She was super professional looking.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: But she wrote, there's another She rolled her eyes a
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: second time inside. I can't even remember what it was
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: for now. I've just been like, do you want your receipt?
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: No Oka, But she rolled her eyes inside again. And
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: it was just super funny because when she was talking
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: to me and we were like way, we were one,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: one on one facing each other. She seemed engaged, but
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: as soon as she would turn back to her computer,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: she'd be like her whole face would scream drop a
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: piano on my head please. It was pretty fun to
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: be pair of that interaction. I'll tell you, I just
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: like watching stuff. I like observing people and learning things.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And I was just fascinated by this girl, just like
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: what is going on with her? Maybe maybe she's having
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a really bad day. And the small talk we talked
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: was like at least, that's nice. I don't have to
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: think about. And then as soon as we stopped talking,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: face just fell back into the well of despair that
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: her computer was apparently showing her. It looked like it
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: was just showing phone plans to me, but I don't know.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: I don't work there, okay, And then I find out
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: it's what was it seven dollars for six dollars? It
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: was six dollars I think for one month, twenty five gigabytes.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: The thing I'm actually remembering is two fifty, but that
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: seems insane. It might be I've been in countries that's
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: only two fifty for a month, But it was either
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: two or six, because it's it was either eight thousand
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: and two gric or twenty thousand and two grick. But
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: it was cheap. I think it was twenty thousand. Maybe
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: it was cheap as hack for six dollars one month,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: twenty five gigabytes of data. And I don't use a
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: ton of data. I have offline maps that I use
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: most of the time. And so she put it. She
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: even installed the app for me on my phone after
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: giving me the SIM card, and it tells me exactly
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: how much I've used after two weeks, I used one gigabyte. Like,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I really don't use a lot data while I'm walking around.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I'm just listening to locally stored podcasts or music locally stored,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: or I have an offline map, So text messages really
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm using, unless I have to look up
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: like what year did Pitch Black come out? In case
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: I need some vin Diesel trivia, which that comes up
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: a lot. I like movies. Pitch Black, what a good movie.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: That's Rodi Mitchell. Right, I just saw Silent Hill again.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Roder Mitchell is so good. She's Australian. What were we
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: talking about? Okay, So I got my simcard. I'm very happy.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: It looks perfect and it has been working perfectly this
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: entire time. This is it was a very painless process
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: and it didn't take long. Yeah, it was great. So
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: then I'm like, all right, let's keep walking. I just
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: successfully gotten my SIM card with very little trouble. So
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: I looked around for a snack to celebrate, and I
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: got a beer and I got some Korean seaweed. And
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I've been seeing I'm only two blocks away from my
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: apartment and I've probably seen twenty Korean restaurants and the
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: same amount of career markets. It's insane. It's all Korean
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: markets and restaurants in ulan Batar, the main city of Mongolia.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: If you don't know, by the way, this is interesting.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: Mongolia has three million people roughly as its entire population.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: One point five million half of the entire country lives
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: in ulan Batar, in the main city, and then across
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: the entire rest of the country, which is quite large,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: is the other one point five million people totally spread out.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Some of them are still nomads. I've met people in
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Mongolia whose relatives are still nomads and shepherds, and it's
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: fascinating to me. So I want some seaweeds, some crispy seaweeds,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: some nori with my favorite snack. I go into a
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: store and they don't have it, not ringing. It doesn't
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: look great. So I just go to the next one
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: and the next one, and then I go in one.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: I was like, that looks perfect. That's what I want,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: some good crispy sheets of sea weed, and I get that,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: and then they have a beer that I think I
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: might have just got cast actually that really crappy regular
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Korean beer, and I go outside, and I walk around
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: and look for another place to sit down, and I'm
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: thinking that Boom wanted me earlier, so I find it
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: more out of the way spot. And it's outside this
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: little school. But it's not like I'm not drinking in
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: front of a bunch of kids. And I don't even know
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: if school was okay. There was a couple kids with
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: parents that walked in there, but I wasn't in front
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: of the door drinking beer right there. I was like
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: around the corner, sitting on a little wall. And I
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: was sitting there for I don't know, ten minutes, and
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I see this guy walk past me, and he looks
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: dressed up like a businessman, and he sees me in
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: like locks eyes with me briefly, and then just keeps walking.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: And then he sits down at a bench maybe fifty
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: feet away, but he has a line of sight on me,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: and I see him just looking at me. But I've
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: been to thirty countries. People look at tourists. They're just like,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: what the heck is this not my countrymen doing here?
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: And it's often just naked curiosity. And I didn't sense
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of animosity, but already I got the sense
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: that Mongolian people are more aggressive than most other countries,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: so hys Stare was a little aggressive. But I was like,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: it doesn't look violent aggressive. It just looks Mongolian aggressive,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: which is just a naked interest in whatever is. Whatever
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: you're interested in. You can have that focus in Mongolia,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: which I don't love. But it's fine. Every country is different.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: There's things, there's things in every country, and it's really
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: interesting to be in a country this aggressive. And I'll
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: say it doesn't it's not the exact same between men
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: and women, but the women here are also fiercely independent
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: and fairly aggressive. In terms of fiercely independent, I'll say
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: aggressive personalities for sure, very very certain in themselves. Okay,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: but I have a bunch of seaweed snacks that I love.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I have a bucket or no, I had a bag.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: I had a bag of kim chi, and I got lucky,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I'll say, because I've had I've tried several kimchie since
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: that first one that was so good. That's the only
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: good one. I don't like a lot of the other ones.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: They all were too spicy, which kim chie isn't supposed
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: to be, and not very complex flavors. But this first
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: one I got jong Goat was great and delicious. So
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: I ate kimchi, I ate my seaweed, and I drank beer.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: I'm just having a ball. And then after I finish everything,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: I stand up. I look over and that guy fifty
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: yards away on the bench is still looking at me,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and he's not eating anything. He just looks really aggressively curious.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: And I have to walk by him to get to
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: the main I don't have to, I just walk that
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: way because I came from the other way. And as
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I walk by him, he goes, you shouldn't eat that
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: in English, not perfect English, but I can understand him,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: and I say, sir, what are you He says, you
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: shouldn't eat that food. It's bad food. And I was like,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: kim chi or nori. He's like, yeah, it's Korean, it's bad.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, why is it bad. It's vegetables, and
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: he said, yeah, but you're a Mongoli you should eat
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Mongolian food. And I was like, well, what are you eating.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: He's like, I'm not eating okay. And he's saying this
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: very obviously, like aggressively and confrontationally, but he's not it
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: certainly didn't. He's a businessman. He didn't look like he
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: was starting a fight. He just looked like, if you're
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: visiting Mongoli, you should eat Mongolian food. And he just
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: wanted to say that and he had to get that out.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: So I was like, okay, well, what Mongolian food should
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: I try? And he looked surprised that I was engaging
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: with him. It seemed I kind of got the impression
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: that he thought I was going to like just blow
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: him off and go walk away and not listen to
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: what he had to say. And he had to think
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: for a while, and then he's like, boots, boots, very
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: good Mongolian food and it's wrapped in bread, there's meat
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: inside boots. You can eat boots, very Mongolian. It's like okay.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: He's like, Korean food's not healthy and I was like, no,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: it is healthy. It's like vegetables, it's pretty healthy. And
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, I like I like Mongolian food better.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: And I was like okay, cool, I'm gonna go. And
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: then he stood up and he was like I'll walk
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: with you. I'm an architect and I was like, oh, okay,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: that's a great job. Do you like it? I can't remera.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: And we had small talk about how he was an
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: architect and in his building there was like a whole
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: city plan of all of Ulambatar or something, which actually
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: i've seen now that i'm thinking about it, maybe that
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: was his building. And yeah, he was very excited. He
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Once I asked Hi about the architecture, he kind of
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: became more civil in terms of less aggressive. He just
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: was more excited about talking. And so we talked and
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: it was fine. But he was a weirdo. So I
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: was like, O, thanks, and he's like, I'm going this way,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: and I was going to go that way, but I decided, oh, okay,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: my house over there, I'm going to go the other way.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: And then he went back to his architect's job and
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: shouted at people for aid and kim chi, and I
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: was totally happy, a little bit buzzed walking down the
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: street and I saw the IQ Museum, which I was
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: very excited to go to the IQ Museum or the
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Intellectual museum. Actually there's like a long name. A lot
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: of the English translated names here are weird to Western ears.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: I'm very curious how that happens. I wish I could
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: have studied Mongolian, so I could understand what's up with
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: all these linguistic quirks of the language. But there's no resources.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: If you have resource for learning Mongolian, and by that
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: I mean an app that I can self direct learn
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: the language, I will even after I leave. Yeah, so
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: there's there, There are plenty. I got boots. It was fine.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: It was not great. It was it was okay. The
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: meat was very tough, so maybe I just went to
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: a bad boots place. But I tried it a few
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: times and that it was just always the meat was
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: very stringy and tough, which is weird for Yak meat.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: Like I said, it's delicious and soft and amazing. But anyway,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I'm glad I tried it because I hadn't tried any
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Mongolian foods yet, so I'm glad I did get to
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: try it. And nobody speaks English. I mean, it's very rare.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: That architect and then the who was the first person,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Actually the first person was the ticket lady. Anyway, it's
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: rare in Ulambatar. So it was always interesting when I
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: came across someone. But mostly I would just hand them
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: my credit card and they would speak in Mongolian and
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: I would try to just say yes and buy it
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: orstal and which just thank you, and just try and
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: get through the interaction, and mostly that works fine. I
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: walked to Sukbatar Square back during the day because I
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: arrived at midnight, and it's actually an extremely impressive city square,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Like if you go to tianan Men, you're not going
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: to be impressed. It's a big square of concrete and
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: you can't really see too much from it. It's just
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: a large collection of paving stones. It's pretty boring. But
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: if you go to Ulambatar Suckquitar Square, there's the massive
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: government Palace. There's a giant five meter statue of Genghis
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Khan sitting on a throne cast in bronze, just staring
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: down at you from his throne. There's another amazing horse statue.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: There's the National Dramatic Theater for Arts or whatever, it's
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: called National Drama Theater. All these very impressive looking buildings
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: around the square that I thought were very fun to
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: walk around and see and take pictures of. And especially
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: with the sun setting, the sunsets here are really really beautiful.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: The sun very strong and very yellow, and the skies
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: are often blue with very nice clouds in them. So
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: every single like sunset, Magic Hour picture I take here
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: are stunning, just like Japan. Actually very stunning pictures here.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: So I enjoyed Suck Guitar Square and I like I
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: even though it's very aggressive. I do like a lot
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: about Mongoli. It seems very practical, again, which I like
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: about China. They're just going about their lives as they
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: understand it in their country. And I don't think there's
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of religion here, and nomads are very normal here.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: So that's nice because I've been traveling for fifteen years,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: so just to know that if I told someone, if
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: I told someone, oh, yeah, I've been traveling for fourteen years,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: they'd be like, yeah, that's what you should do. This
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: is the most nomad country there is. It makes perfect
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: sense to them. And well, I'll get more into that later,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I guess. I went to a restaurant. I went to
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: a Japanese restaurant called Haku and it was pretty good.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I got some karag and I got a lemon what
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: are they called the lemon sour? Yeah, the Japanese lemon sour.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: I went into some Mongolian restaurants but the menus didn't.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: They weren't. They had like eight dishes no matter what
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Mongolian restaurant I went into, and none of them looked amazing,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: and half of the dishes were Korean or Japanese anyway,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: so it was tricky to find like just traditional Mongolian
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: fair and I know they're around, but later on, when
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: I did go to those places, it was still boots
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: and kushur, which I love actually, and noodles and then
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: fried rice. There wasn't a lot of distinctive Mongolian cuisine,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: and I think that's because they're nomads. They've been nomads forever.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: They still are a bunch of them, and if you're
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: no madding, you don't have as much time to come
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: up with fancy cuisine, especially when it gets below zero
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: six months out of the year. So not a super
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: varied cuisine looks like. But the stuff they have is good,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: which I'll get into a little bit later. I went
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: to Haku, that Japanese restaurant lemon sour karate and French
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: fries something else, can't remember whatever, it was a pretty
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: good restaurant. I decided to go back. I did a
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: couple times, but I found other better restaurants that I
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: started frequenting. Frequenting instead the day after I got the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: punch cart for Haku. Actually, ooh, you know what I
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: was really excited about. I went to all the supermarkets
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: looking at all the fun snacks they have, and then
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: I realized they had spicy chili oil and noki mushrooms,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: which are one of my favorite snacks and I get
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: them whenever I can, and they all taste a little
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: bit different, so you have to find which brand uses
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the real chili oil, or at least the better tasting
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: chili oil. And in Mongolia it's you'd get yood ger Is.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: It's probably the best one. There's another good one, but
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what it was because I think
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: it was written in Mongolian. But they have a bunch
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: of different types of Enochi mushrooms marinated in chili spicy
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: chili oil, which is, yeah, like I said, one of
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: my favorite sacks, delicious. So I got a bunch and
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: I ate a whole bunch that day, and I still
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: have my bottle the day with me, so it's totally fine.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: After they passed through my system and I walked down
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: to the National Park I had heard about, probably a
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: few days later of that first week, probably closer to
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: the end of the first week. I started branching out.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I kept walking around every day because it was an
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: interesting city. It wasn't it wasn't a fly It's not
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: I should say, it's not a flashy city. But it's
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: definitely an interesting city. And there are things happening. There's
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: a jazz club here, and there are concerts there. There's
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Imax theaters. There's stuff going on. So I went down
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: to the National Park and walked around it. I thought
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: I walked all around it. I walked around like ten
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: percent of it. It's a huge park. It's I don't
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: even know, twenty city blocks, forty it's giant. They have
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of space in this country, so I guess
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't be that surprised, but I was pretty surprised. No,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: there's no way it's forty. I don't even think it's
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: twenty city blocks. But it's large, and they have big
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: blocks in this country. Everything's pretty big here. The people
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: are bigger. The people are big Asians, and they're all
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: all the boys are handsome, cool motorcycle dudes, and all
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: the chicks are tough ladies, so they're just cool. I'll
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: wearing leather jackets. They got cool hair, but not like
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: delicate South Korean hair. It's just like it's just jelled
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: or it's just like shaved. And a lot of them
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: are curly haired, and some of them have brown hair.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: And there's an urban legend, or at least a purported
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: historical fact, that Genghis Khan had red hair and some
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: say blue eyes, and since there's no picture, there's no
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: like nobody really knows for sure, but a couple of
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: people brought that up while I was here, so I
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: was surprised they all know that, but I guess they must,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: because Genghis Khan is. His presence is everywhere in this city,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: and I probably around the whole country. There's a fifty
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: meters horse statue with him on it that I didn't
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: go to because all the locals were like, eh, it's
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: a big horse, don't worry about it. And I've seen
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: big horse statues. I bet it would be cool, but
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: I'm just just too lazy to get out there. It's
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: pretty far outside the city, and I've been finding so
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: many interesting things I like to do and explore around
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: the city that I just haven't made it there yet. Okay,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: this was interesting. Oh yeah, wait, there's a couple things.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: I was at the roller rink, nineties roller rink, and
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: so they were playing like the Rough Riders Anthem and
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: all sorts of nineties rap and pop R and B songs,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: all the hits of nineties US rap. And what was
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: great was that it was all in Mongolian. They weren't
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: playing the actual songs, they were playing Mongolian cover versions
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: of those songs. So yeah, there was the Rough Riders
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: Anthem in Mongolian and Helicopter in Mongolian, and just all
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: these super recognizable tunes but in Mongolian, which is a cool, guttural,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: aggressive sounding language. Okay. There were a bunch of Mongolian
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: girls I noticed, and women who had stars on their heads,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: and I was very confused, and I thought it was
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: just like a cute design. It looked cute, like little
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: stars on their faces one or two. I was very
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: confused though. I couldn't figured it out why they would
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: do that except as a cool decoration or a holiday,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: you know, like ash Wednesday, maybe put something on your forehead.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: But they some of the stickers were in different places,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: and there was different numbers of stickers or tattoos. I
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: couldn't even tell it first, and my host didn't know,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: and I asked people. They didn't know. But I finally
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: asked someone and she told me that they're anti pimple stickers.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: They're like pimple medicated pads, and you can get them
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: in different shapes, but the stars the most popular. And
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: you know what, good it looks good like. I don't
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: think they have to they probably don't actually need to
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: use it, but it does look kind of cute that
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: there's all these ladies and girls walking around with stars
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: on their faces little David Bowie action. I mean they're
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: not giant stars like he had, but just little star
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: stickers on the face. And it looks cool. Everything looked,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, everything the people do looks pretty cool here.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: They're very fashionable people, and I'm wondering if any of
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: that fashion is influenced from Russia. But I watch a
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: lot of videos of Russian stuff. They don't seem super
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: fashionable to me. Are regular Russian people generally quite fashionable,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: like in terms of clothing, because Mongolians are like everybody
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: dress as well in a rough rider way, in a
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: rough way, in a non delicate South Korean way, but
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: they have they're clearly taking care of their appearance like
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: a South Korean wood and they take care of their hairstyle.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't look delicate. They're a broader, sturdier people
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: in general. And there and they wear like, like I said,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: leather motorcycle jackets. And even if they're not cyclists, even
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: if they're not motorcycle people, they're they're wearing badass like
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: spikes and boots and stuff. They're cool. These people are cool.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: You should come here if you want to see cool people.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: The Mongolian boys. There's a lot of electric bikes here,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: like a lot of electric motorcycles, and a whole bunch
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: of the kids have them, like I mean kid from
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: like I don't know, nine up to fifteen, like these
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: pretty young people and doing wheelies down the road like
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: in traffic a lot. Every day. Every hour I walk around,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing one or two kids pop a wheelie on
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: their bike, and sometimes it'll be like ten an hour.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: It's very common. I've never I haven't seen a single
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: day where I haven't seen someone doing a wheelie when
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: I've been walking outside okay. And the next up is
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the IQ Museum, the Intellectual Museum, which is a very
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: interesting puzzle museum. But I will talk about that next week.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for listening. It's been fascinating
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: being in Mongolia. I'll tell you more Mongolian stories in
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the next installment next week. Have a great rest of
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: your day. You can talk to me a Bit of
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: a Rambler Gmail at com Bit of a Rambler Blueskin
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: Bit of a Rambler, I lem me and I will
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: talk to you soon.