Sorry for the Group Email

Ulan Batar is impossible to spell. Written in Mongolian it’s barely legible to foreign idiots like me, and the rest of the time you spend trying to decide where the double vowels go. Ulaan Baatar is one variation. Ulaan Bataar is another. There are more as well, and none of them give you a really good idea how to pronounce it properly. I’ve picked one and stuck to it, but who’s to say it’s right?

Ulan Batar itself is a strange mixture of poor Eastern stereotype and the rich west. The cars are a gleaming far cry from Russia’s beaten Ladas, and the city centre is littered with building work; pictures on the fringes of the work sites show the final product, towering monsters of gleaming steel and polished glass.

On the train from Irkutsk (a mere day’s journey), our sour-faced carriage attendant scowled and told us to watch out for pick-pockets. “Mongolians very bad,” she said. I thought darkly of my experience on the St Petersburg metro and said nothing. I don’t speak Russian, how could I?

(Incidentally, I did get pick-pocketed in Mongolia on my way out of the State Department Store. Again, all of my things stayed in all of my pockets. I was terribly English about the whole thing, but the next person who goes near my wallet is going to have a very stern telling off. Or at least a disgruntled sideways look.)

Even so, after Russia Mongolia was a revelation. A very sizeable percentage of Russians, you see, are quite extraordinarily rude. The old women elbow you out of the way on the metro (often, whether you’re in the way or not), and the young men drink themselves into a dangerous oblivion while staring at you over their vodka. There are some very nice Russians, of course (we met many), but in the same way that there are some friendly Milwall fans. It must be true, but there are times that you just can’t feel it.

Here’s an example. We went to have supper in a friendly-looking (by which I mean the lights were on) café next to Lake Baikal. At the table opposite us were three Russian men in their late thirties. They were some way south of hammered when we arrived, and as soon as we sat down they turned and stared at us, mumbling, I think, about how many fingers they fancied breaking before they started on my limbs.

I started to plan my escape strategy. I hadn’t thought further than throwing my wallet at them and curling up on the floor when one of them wobbled over. What was my name? Did I like rap? (Surprisingly difficult to think of a crowd-pleasing response to that one.) And then, from the blue: “You like fighting?”

I like to think that he meant in a spectator sport kind of way, in the same way I like to think that the Japanese are just misguided in their approach to whaling. It’s more likely he wanted to take me outside, before leaving me in a pool of my own lungs.

Eventually, thankfully, they left, taking care to bodycheck an incoming backpacker on their way.

Out attention shifted to a sixty year-old man with an unsteady gaze and even less stable legs. First he wanted to dance with the women in the women. Then, and it was at this point I detected a theme, he wanted to fight someone. True, eventually he was folded into the back of a car and driven away by his laughably pissed driver, but my lingering memory is of him bellowing obscenities at our guide, his hands clapped round his neck.

The Mongolians are nicer. (If they were worse, I suppose, they’d have to shoot you at the border crossing.) We were greeted with curious stares everywhere we went, and delighted in sending children into fits of giggles with nothing more than a wave and a smile. Gangs of teenagers said “hi,” on the street, seemingly without also wanting to steel our wallets and break our jaws.

I suppose I should mention at this point that there isn’t that much to do in Ulan Batar. There’s a scattering of small museums and the State Department Store, the latter home to a John Lewis-style collection of household goods, and the main hangout for the city’s notorious pickpockets.

It was heart-lifting to be greeted with curiosity and friendliness instead of suspicion and hostility, though. Ulan Batar’s streets are wide and bright, its shops clean and welcoming, and it has a surprisingly wide choice of restaurants. Should you find yourself there for the afternoon, I’d try the delicious and keenly-priced City Nomad Grill.

If you pressed me, I’d tell you Russia is a fascinating and occasionally stunningly beautiful place that you should absolutely go and see. But its polar opposite is just a visa application across the border, and you’d be mad to miss it.

Dave doesn’t hate Russians. I just wish they’d be a bit nicer. I’m writing this on the train from Erlian to Beijing, which means things are getting very behind. More pictures, incidentally, in the Flickr set.

Tags: , drinking, drunks, fighting, fights, hostility, irkutsk, journey, Mongolia, pick-pockets, revelation, rude, Russia, spelling, st petersburg, train, trans-siberian express, ulan batar, vodka, vodka train