Wedding Celebration

Last Friday, we, along with most of Xiamen were invited to a wedding for the owner of the bar named You and Me 2 . It was our first Chinese wedding, well actually it was the reception and it was held at the owner, Ulf's bar, but hey, close enough.

The reception had started at 6pm, and when we arrived approximately 1/2 hour later, we discovered all the food was gone but happily the drinks were still flowing.








We met up with friends we hadn't seen all summer, and somehow became the unofficial photographers for Ulf's wedding and basically any other event that he has at his bar.

It was a good time and we wish them all the best.

Peace and Quiet....

Last week when we returned from Mongolia we were shocked by lack of construction noise from the site next to our apartment. It was a pleasant surprise to have quiet after 7 full months of listening to them work from 06:00 to 22:00 every single day...

Outside they dismantled their equipment, painted them a nice new orange color and loaded them onto trucks so that they can take them someplace where they can annoy someone else.
They've started to dig down around the concrete posts that have been poured all over the site. I've tried to show that in the lower photo, but now they'll knock down approximately the first meter of concrete and then tie the rebar into more rebar and then pour some additional concrete for a base or whatever.
Just this last weekend, the digging really began as the dump trucks have been lining up to care away truck load after truck load of dirt.
We love the quiet, as we had begun to believe that we would never see the end of it. Maybe now the construction will really kick into high speed and we will be able to get back into regular updates...

Final day of our Mongolian Holiday

Our final full day in Mongolia started with a visit to Gandan Monastery.
After touring around the monastery, which contains the largest covered standing buddha in the world, we then went over to the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khaan.
But, same as in the monastery, you have to pay extra if you want to take photos once inside and we felt that we already had enough photos, so all you get is a photo of the main entrance.

After that we decided to try and do some of the other museums in UB, the Museum of General Intelligence, the International Intellectual Museum, and the Railway Museum but for some reason they are all closed on weekends. We were able to look at some old train engines that were out on display, but even the gates to that small park were locked up so we couldn't get any really good photos...
From there we had lunch at an Indian restaurant that was next to the old Headquarters of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party. This is the building that was burnt down during the rioting in Mongolia back at the beginning of July.
We spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering around on our own, giving the driver and our tour guide some time to spend with their families. We met up with our guide later in the evening and she took us over to a traditional Mongolian folk show.
Then off to our final dinner in a restaurant that had a nice view out over the city.
That's it, the next morning we were picked up at 08:00 and driven to the airport. A short hop to Beijing, a few hours to enjoy the new airport and then we were safely back home here in Xiamen. An excellent holiday trip, especially since we can now both say that we've ridden on a yak...

Leaving Ulaanbataar

Terelj National Park

Our last day out in the countryside of Mongolia was spent inside of Terelj National Park, an absolutely beautiful part of the country.A quick walk across a rickety bridge and we climbed up to Aryabala Monastery.
Then we drove over to take some quick photos of Turtle Rock.
After an good morning of touring around to the best sites in the park we went back to the ger camp so that we could head out for a one hour tour on horseback.
The horse riding was alright, especially with the scenery, but after that we wandered down to a nearby nomadic family for what we really were looking forward to - yak riding...

Yeah - the good fun of hopping up onto a yak. After the short yak ride we spend a little time with the family, again being offered the fermented mares milk and dried yogurt squares.

After all that fun we hopped back into the car and head back to UlaanBaatar where we checked into our hotel and we able to take a nice long hot shower. For dinner Tseke took us to one of the dinner nightspots that she likes to go to, a sort of restaurant-bar that has live music in the evenings. We stayed for a while and listed to the band but it was basically the same type of place that we can go to in the states or even in China, and since we were exhausted from another full day, we called it an early night and went back to the hotel.

More on Mongolia...

Another day of getting up nice and early followed by several hours of you pick your own path across the Mongolian countryside. Eventually we made our way back to Ulaanbaatar and then headed up out to the northeast of the city
A little more than an hour outside of UB, still on paved roads but where there is nothing around they just finished building this giant statue of Chinggis Khaan.
Apparently it will eventually have stores and a movie theater inside, and you can walk up in the statue to get a view from the horses head. When we were there the building was locked.

From there we went to a touristy area that is set up to recreate what life was like back in the 13th century when the Mongolians ruled most all of Asia.
It was interesting to listen to them describe how they would set up the camps every so often so that they could run messages from the edges of their empire back to the capital.

In the chair of the outpost leader

Lunch with our driver and guide

A shaman ritual site

After touring the sites at the old outpost, shaman site, old library, and a blacksmith setup we headed off to the Terelj national park.

Bridge into Terelj park - very safe looking

A nice dinner and then we retired to our ger for the night. This was our last night in a ger, the next day we tour Terelj Park and then we spent our final two nights in the comfort of a hotel with a shower back in Ulaanbaatat.