I arrived without a hitch in Mongolia.

I almost missed my flight because I wasn't paying attention to the time and instead yapping with Kim over a cup of tea. When my cab got me to the airport, I was in a rush and forgot to pay my airport tax and had to go back. Then I forgot the departure card and the health declaration. I was a mess.

Finally, I got on board and relaxed. We arrived in Ulan Bator and I got a taxi to my guesthouse, Nassan's. As usual, the driver was a dick and kept going in circles and we finally had it out. I eventually arrived and went straight back out on the town for a pathetic meal of greasy meat. Bleh.

To make up for it, I decided to visit the Museum of Mongolian History. The first floor was dedicated to random prehistory stuff, but the second floor had traditional Mongolian costumes. This is when I realized that the costume designers from the new Star Wars films were not nearly as original as I thought. I had thought that the costuming, especially for Padme in Episode I, was particularly innovative. I was wrong, they just copied the traditional garb of the Mongolians!! I could have realized this by being a geek, and looking at this:

Costume site,

but it was much more fun to have been shocked at seeing something I associate with a sci-fi trilogy in a remote country's history museum. The robes they had in the museum were the spitting image of the costumes in the movie.

I left the museum and headed back to Nassan's to see if the two guys I was told were looking for someone to share a jeep to the Gobi Desert were around. They were and I found out that an 8 day trip was super cheap and when we find one more person, we're off. This will give me enough time to get to this amazing northern lake I've been hearing about continuously since I've arrived. It should be an interesting sidetrip because it's further north by about 2 days travel. It's really chilly here in UB, so I can only imagine what going further north will do.

As for Ulan Bator itself, it's an interesting place. It seems that everyone knows someone who has been robbed so I've been leaving the guesthouse with nothing but a few bills, one piece of paper to write things on, toilet paper, and a pen. That doesn't leave much to be stolen. I was also advised to not go out after dark because there are bandit types around. The most surprising of all- there are skinheads in UB. A French guy I met said he even saw a guy with an SS uniform and another car with the red nazi swastika on it. I think they are missing the point that Nazis would be more than happy to rid the world of yellow people as well as brown, black, and slightly tan. But that seems to be a minor point of philosophy...

Today I woke up and decided to try another museum, the recommended Natural History Museum. I got in as a student (for a whopping 1000 whatever the currency is called or the equivalent of 90 cents) and spent an hour amusing myself with the displays. The first floor was about geology and geography, and was not a particularly exciting start. They had cases with labels like "stony materials" (they didn't feel being specific was necessary) or "crystals of rock crystal."

There was one room dedicated to what seemed like a Mongolian cosmonaut's trip into space. As I looked at his helmet, I wondered what compelled him to trust Russian engineers with his safety and how he thought this helmet (the equivalent to that for a motorcycle) was ever going to help if he got into trouble. I wondered the same thing when I was last in the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. and saw their ancient "space age" technology, but somehow this just seemed even crazier.

The second floor was much more interesting and was filled with, go figure, natural history. The first set of displays all involved the birds of Mongolia. The taxidermists seemed to do a really good job with the larger birds (eagles, kites, crows, and ravens) but had a hard time with the smaller ones. They looked like a bunch of feathers glued together with a beak and feet attached in approximately the right spots. The owl case was filled with various sized owls, all of which had eyes so wide it looked like they were in the middle of having a proctology exam. I guess the taxidermists got a bit overzealous with the glass/plastic eyes. WHOOO whoo...

Also impressive was the size of the black vulture in the last case. It's windspan must have been about 6-7 feet and was posed as if it were descending on unfortunate prey- me. Even though it was dead, I was glad the glass was there because it sure gave me the creeps. Even stranger still was the confusingly placed snow leopards, which was in with the birds. The case was lit with black lights, giving the impression of a taxidermist techno club.

I had heard that Mongolia has found some sizable dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert and they were now in this museum. I was a bit disappointed- they have 1.5 large specimens. There was one huge pair of arms, full with six inch claws, hanging off the wall, and some other flesh eater that stood 4 meters high. My perspective changed a bit when a group of older Mongolian tourists, dressed in traditional clothing, came in and were ohhhing and ahhing. It dawned on me that these guys have never been to New York and seen our terrifying skeletons in the Museum of Natural History. Instead of watching them finger the skeletons(touching everything in a museum is a major thing in Asia), I moved on to the smaller dinosaurs. In this section, they did have some good stuff. Ever since seeing Jurassic Park, the word "velociraptor" gives me the shivers, and the museum had several, including one who had died while attacking a protoceratops -locked in battle eternally.

Naturally, the reptile section was right after the dinosaur section and there I made a really great discovery: the native Dione Ratsnake. Hey Dione, did you know about this??? You have your very own ratsnake. You should feel special.

With that, my visit was complete and I took off for another walk in the brisk, BRISK, weather, hoping not to encounter zud, which my buddy Kathy recently informed me was the harsh winter climate typical to Mongolia. If I'm not frozen, I will write more soon!

Oh yeah, Mom, check your email.