It was time to go for a walk in the big city. Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia and it’s cultural, financial and Industrial heart. Nevertheless there are only about one and half million people living here. Mongolia has a total of three million people.

 

If you walk around you can see the city and economy is almost exploding here. In most of the modern cafes you will find European prices. Everywhere you can see new buildings arising. But if you look closely the workers are not Mongolian, but Korean or Chinese. A north korean person can make relatively good money here.

I believe Mongolia has maybe the fastest growing economy in the world nowadays. If there is an economist reading this, please correct me if I am wrong. The reason is the richness in the soil. There are many minerals to be found, and lots of mining companies. But it is mostly big multinationals exploiting this.  I also get the feeling all young people in the country are drawn to the city.

Wages of people here have drastically increased so people live on total different standards then in the country. You will find any shop you can imagine and brands like Burbery, Gucci, D&G. Out of curiousity I checked a few shops like Boss and Omega. Prices are quite higher than in London for example.

The mongols like to dress up, you can see it in the Streets and in the cafes. In the cafe you can see there are more women than men. First reason is statistically, there are simple more women. Secondly men go more out working in countries like South Korean to get more money.

Another thing I noticed is that there are some big fellas walking around here. I think the Mongols are the biggest of the Asians. Better not mess with them 🙂 When they are in a car they are like always racing, so I had to lookout when crossing roads here!

The main square is the Sukhbaatar square where there is a statue of Ghengis Khan.

I went looking for a bookstore and found a store called Papillon. It is a great little shop and has all the greatest works in English. So I was reading in this shop in the afternoon some books.

In the evening I met with my mongolian friend Tuvshin. We had beers in the famous Irish pub Grand Khan. There was a great band playing, called beers 🙂