Tuesday 14 May 2013

Part 20 - My odyssey of beers from many lands

While my experience on the Trans-Siberian train wasn't the drunken vodka-fuelled rampage that everyone claims it to be, I did manage to sample a lot of the local fare. I didn't JUST drink beer, but hey, it's Russia, not much else to do sometimes ...

This actually says Zhiguly. It was very nice. It was 250 roubles (£5.20) for 500ml in the Hotel Cosmos. It was also 55 roubles (£1.14) in the kiosk at Ulan Ude. 9/10.



This is Kozel, a Czech beer served in the wrong glass by a very unhelpful barman. It also cost about 300 roubles (£6.20) for 500ml in the Hotel Cosmos. Wasn't very nice though. 6/10.



I had this one, Stare Misto, in the London Pub (what else) in Kiev. Despite lack of Cyrllic it's a Ukrainian beer. 8/10.



Chernigiv-something? Another Ukrainian feast. 7/10.



This is Spaten, served in the wrong glass in my hotel in Moscow. Grumpy barman didn't make it taste better. 5/10.



Baltika 7 was the best of the Baltikas we saw. There was a 0, a 3 and a 9 version too and there are probably all the ones in between too. They vary in strength but this one hit the spot. 9/10.



Here it is again, in a one-litre can version. That's quite a big can. They're common in Russia (in places that actually have stocks of beer).



Abakanskoe beer. Better than the food. 7/10.



Syngur beer from Mongolia. This was very enjoyable. 9/10.



Borgio - as it says on the can, a Mongolian "lager beer" (those two words just make me think of Mitchell and Webb). 7/10.



Finally, a continuation of my journey which I didn't quite make. This is Hite, a South Korean beer I picked up in a supermarket in Peace Street, Ulaanbaatar. It cost about 60 pence but most beers were a bit cheaper than that. It was quite nice - like a lot of Eastern beers it is brewed from rice instead of hops. 7/10.

Part 19 - The Zaisan Monument

Ulaanbaatar is a very odd-shaped city. It goes on for several miles east-west - maybe 15 or so in each direction from the centre - with only a few miles north-south. The Zaisan monument is only a couple of miles from the city centre but it overlooks the whole city, sitting on the edge of the impressive Bogdkhan Uul mountain which imposes over the city.

Having reached the monument Erdenee stopped to get some lunch from the kiosk at the foot of the stairs. No one told me I had to climb up 295 steps to get to the top! (Yes I counted them all).



What's worse of course is when I get to the top, out of breath, there's a 90-year-old lady standing there. Okay, so the climb wasn't that hard.



The monument is impressive and the view is impressive. On the outside you've got a stone-cold communist lump of concrete complete with hammers and sickles and images of Lenin and Sukhbaatar, the father of modern Mongolia. Inside you've got a mosaic presented by the Communists to the grateful people of Mongolia showing the struggle of the Mongolian people against various capitalists and imperialists through the ages.





















The view over the city is pretty impressive too.





At the bottom there was something else going on with a tank and another communist frieze. I'll come back to you on this one!





Part 18 - A great big statue of Ghengis Khan

Today I've decided to get one of the locals to drive me around all morning and afternoon. And just in case I needed to reassess the wisdom of the decision, I've gone and found myself a car with HELP in big letters on the side of it.



The driver is Erdenee from Helptaxi and he's collected me at 10.15am from the hotel. My plan is to visit the Chinggis Khan Equestrian Statue at Tsonjin Boldog, 54 km east of the city. I expected it to take an hour or so to get there, an hour back, simple?

One thing I've already experienced from crossing the road is that drivers don't give way to pedestrians or each other. There are zebra crossings but they are always ignored, and there's no such thing as cars giving way to each other - they just drive out and merge. It's the worst driving I've ever seen - but it's not aggressive driving. I didn't see any accidents or anyone nearly get run over. It's an organised chaos and everyone accepts it as a way of life.

This chaos has taken Erdenee ONE HOUR to get out of Ulaanbaatar and onto the road that heads east. The traffic was horrendous - he said a few roads were closed and it was forcing everyone onto the same roads. Cars are weaving in and out of lanes, cutting each other up. What's worse is that I only saw ONE direction sign, and that was soon after leaving the hotel. It's almost impossible to do this without satnav - unless you're a guy like Erdenee, who's clearly done the Mongolian knowledge and took every shortcut he could to get us out quicker.



As we got out of the town it got predictably a lot more rural. The roads were terrible though. If you live anywhere where there are potholes in the road, you still won't have seen anything like this. The Chinese built a better motorway that goes to Beijing, but unfortunately we didn't go on that one.









It took nearly two hours in all to make it over to the Ghengis Khan statue. But it was worth it. It's basically a big steel statue, 40 metres high and probably the same amount or more long. Because of the way the land lies you can't see it for miles around, but it's still amazing when you get the first glimpse of it.



When we got there we were the only ones there so I pretty much had the place to myself, although a few more tourists turned up within half an hour or so. Well worth the 7000 Togrog (£3.20) it cost to get in.















Going back, I asked Erdenee if we could stop off at Zaisan, a momunent on the south side of the city. He said yes, no problem, I know a shortcut. This is where the shortcut started ...



And here are some of the ROADS we travelled on ...





If you can imagine driving through a quarry with jagged rocks on the ground, or just grass with nothing ahead of you but a few vague tracks, that's Erdenee's road. Even if you did have satnav you'd give it a go because the roads are shown on Google Maps, but you'd come to a point very soon where you'd think the road had ended and would just turn back, but there we were travelling across the plains, over rocks, up and down banks where vehicles shouldn't rightly be allowed at all, and we didn't even have a 4x4 to do it in. Fair play to the guy, he knew exactly where he was going, and if was a shortcut, we didn't hit another traffic jam until we hit the Zaisan monument (not literally, of course).

Monday 13 May 2013

Part 17 - Exploring Ulaanbaatar

6.30am on a Sunday morning and I am dragging my suitcase out of the railway station at Ulaanbaatar towards my hotel, about 20 minutes' walk away. At 106° 53′ east I'm three times further east than I've ever been before - and I did it all by train!

The station had Cyrillic on the front and Latin on the back, which was a bit odd - didn't happen in Russia like that.





In my first ten minutes I must have been asked by about 20 people if I needed a taxi. Most of them weren't even taxis. This is normal in UB - everyone is a taxi driver, and if you stand by the side of the road and put your hand out someone will stop very quickly to take you somewhere for a cheap fee. I fancied the walk and found some quiet sidestreets where I would get less hassled.



I'm already starting to see some of the quirks of a place that's a "long way away". This official-looking "you are here" helper has clearly been printed from Google Maps!



My hotel was the Ramada and I persuaded them to let me in early. I had a long shower, had an enormous buffet breakfast and then fell asleep in the most comfortable bed I'd been in in months, waking up just after lunchtime. My time zones are now officially all over the place. Never mind, great bed, and I don't think I've ever had a view from a room that's beaten this one.



Decided to walk down to the main focus of the city, Sukhbaatar Square - about a 25 minute stroll down Peace Avenue. This is a pretty lively road, with a lot of people now showing themselves and lots of varied shops open, including these two of my favourites:





Sukhbaatar Square is a fantastically massive open space, perfect for all those military/Communist parades of yesterday. You just don't get space like this in Europe.