dust, dust and more dust

UB: its a bit wild west. the population is only about 2.5 million but a large number of people are now drifting towatds city life. UB holds about 700,000 and of those about 67% are under the age of 35, 30% under the age of 16. the Soviets had control up until 1990 but after the collapse of communism Mongolia became self-governing. The Communists had control still up until very recently - in fact similar events happening in Iran now were played out here just a short time ago when election results in favour of the democratic party were alleged to have been rigged in favour of the communists which then lead to riots. its settled down a bit and they now have a democratic president but who know where it will lead what with the disappearance of the agrarian life, the rise of the city and resulting unemployment following the world-wide economic collapse. my first few days here were spent just exploring UB which, to be quite frank, is tiny. most of my exploration ended up in museums or cafes. in part i was limited due to my travel plans: i'd come to do the tran-siberian and see Naadam, not to travel much in Mongolia itself. the festival fell 3 days after my arrival so a trip somewhere deep into the interior of the land of the open sky wasn't going to be that easy and besides which it was Naadam i wanted to see. the museums were a study in dust, like many of the streets. the Natural History Museum consisted of a number of stuffed animals presented behind glass that looked as if they'd been there since the 1950's and were still looking miserable at being caught. most of the fish and worms were in jars of formaldahyde which were as interesting as they sounded. the best exhibit were dinsoaur skeletons found in the Gobi, 2 of which were found fighting. thus Mongolia holds one of the most interesting dinosaur specimens in the world. still covered in dust. why don't they buy dusters? they're cheap!!! the Gobi is where many dinosaur specimens are still found and if you travel there apparently the locals try to sell you dinosaur eggs. not in an omlette i hope. the National Museum of Mongolia was a bit more interesting as it went back to the stone age with some of the first known examples of writing in Deep Stupas ... the main one of which is at the Hermitage in St Petersburg where i'm heading soon. a bit weary from museuming i went to visit numerous cafes and despite being desperate for coffee i couldn't find a decent one anywhere: sydney ruins travel to the rest of the world purely on the basis that it serves the best coffee in the world. the locals here distance themselves from tourists - party as English is not commonly spoken but also due to the tourist-local divide. to engage more you'd have to spend longer with a few locals and i knew this wouldn't happen in the time i had so i resigned myself to just going with the flow and not getting to know many people as i'd usually try to. i guess this is party because i'm so used to working in developing countries and getting to know what lies behind the scenes so to speak. however being a tourist here, to a certain degree i had to act the part. this changed a bit when Naadam started as i met an American woman, Margaret, on placement for a Master in Public Health and Social Work. having a similar porfessional background and having worked in similar situations i could relate to what she was experiencing and she also enlightened me as to what was going on behind the scenes ...