DAY 170 TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11 ULAAN BAATOR

Another full day of sightseeing today as tomorrow is a free day for us (also for Emma and Arna).  We had a menu breakfast in a European dining room, almost empty again.  There is a separate Korean dining room, so we wondered whether the hotel was built with Korean money.  Emma met us at 9.50 and Arna drove us to the Buddhist Temple Area which occupied a very large city block with too many separate buildings for us to count.  There are 400 Tibetan monks living here for a start. But there are a lot more pigeons than people.  Seed sellers are all over the place.

We entered the temple straight ahead where 40 Tibetan monks were chanting with occasional noise from bells and drums. They would be there for most of every day.They had copies of ancient Tibetan manuscripts which they were studying.We entered two more temples and Emma told us there were representations of 500 gods in the enclosure. This one had a golden statue of a woman with four arms that was 26 metres high.

In one open space we saw a huge pair of golden feet which will be the base of a statue that will be taller than the Statue of Liberty and the Christ of the Andes.  Another slap for the Communists?  There were beggars, prayer wheels and candles everywhere.
We came back to the main street called Peace Avenue and had a better look at the Parliament building as we crossed the public square.

The national flag was flying on top.  It has three colours: red for courage, blue for the sky and dark red for blood.

We crossed the road and spent two hours in the Natural History Museum with Emma adding explanations as we went.  We saw birds, animals, fish and plants of Mongolia and occasionally something that we see in Australia.  We bought ourselves a light lunch at a restaurant, first time we had to buy our own food in Mongolia. Next stop was the Cashmere Shop where we bought several items at reasonable prices. Then Emma returned to take us up to the top of a hill for a panorama of the city.

There were a lot of apartment buildings under construction, these ones right next to a huge golden statue.  In ten years time this city will look quite different. It now houses 51% of the country's people and that will be increasing. This was the view:

We walked up 300 steps to get this high. Our exercise for the day.  There was a monument at the top to commemorate the alliance between Mongolia and Russia in the Second World War. Back at the bottom of the hill Arna found a parking spot near the Post Office and Emma guided us through the process of sending our purchases home.  The staff were helpful and the cost was cheaper than Scandinavia by far.
Just across the road was the City Concert Hall where we were treated to an 80 minute presentation of Mongolian dance and music by many of the best performers in the country.  The costumes were spectacular and the finale was a selection of pieces by the National Symphony Orchestra, which featured quite a few local traditional instruments.  The whole program was just as entertaining and professional as the one we saw in Moscow, which shows how seriously they treat their culture.
We bought a CD and DVD to remind us of the night.  A great meal at the excellent Grill restaurant followed.  We selected our own ingredients and this man grilled it into a stir meal while performing tricks with his long tongs.

Faster than the camera could follow.  Emma brought us back to the hotel at 9.15pm.  She had done everything for us today except tuck us in to bed.  She had to catch a bus home which would take her another hour. We could not wish for a more helpful guide.