This morning I slept in just a bit, as it's been a busy week. I woke up around 11:30 and saw it was a beautiful day! Catriona, another house guest, was going to head up to Zaizan (sp?), a nearby monument on top of a hill, built in the 70's dedicated to Russian victory in WWII. I decided to go for the journey as well. We were going to catch a bus but it really wasn't that far away, maybe 5km or so, so we decided to walk instead. On the way out of the city, we passed a large Buddhist statue painted in gold, a most unexpected sight! At the base of the hill the monument stands upon is a tank on a pedestal, with the route shown that the tanks took to Berlin. Some of the local kids were playing on the tank and thought it to be great fun. There's also a carving on a wall with three soldiers, two Mongols on the outside and a Russian with quite a hairstyle in the centre (see picture).

To get to the top of the hill, there is a long staircase and a few benches along the way to rest. There were lots of kids dressed in suits up there as well since it was a graduation celebration day in the city as well. On the walk up, it became extremely windy and things started blowing off people and vanishing into the distance. Fortunately, everything on me was well secured. Half way up the stairs was a little cafe and souvenir shop as well, which I think was there more for people to take an excuse for a break than for anything else. After about 10 minutes on the stairs, we arrived at the top.

The monument is a circular structure with a mosaic on the inside. It has an ovo (sp?) which is a pile of rocks at the top of many of the Mongolian hills, usually topped with a horse skull. You are meant to only pass the ovo in a clockwise direction, or else it's bad luck. It is good luck to place an offering of any sort on the ovo. The "pass with the ovo on your right" (or clockwise) theory gets tricky for cars coming over a hill in the countryside, since cars drive on the right here. So what happens is that as cars approach the top of a hill with an ovo at the top, they quickly switch lanes to go in the left lane so as to pass with it on the right. I can only imagine how many accidents are brought about by this "good luck". You'd certainly need the good luck doing that. On a separate note, and sorry for the tangent, but Catriona told me another superstition here is that you NEVER start anything new on a Tuesday. No new projects, no business deals, no starting off on a road trip. So anything that doesn't get started on a Monday just has to wait until Wednesday.

Anyway, so the ovo at the top of this hill, right next to the circular mosaic, is mostly covered with bits of random flowers, scarves, and misc stuff that looks more like litter to me. In the middle of the circular monument is a pedestal for an eternal flame, though it looks like it went out long ago. The mosaic itself is fascinating. It has everything from the evil Nazis to a Russian cosmonaut with a missile launcher in the background, though I'm not sure how that relates to WWII. From the top you could also see the aforementioned American school which stands out like a sore thumb!

The walk back down was equally windy but once back at the bottom, the wind was gone. We decided to stop by the Winter Palace temple on the way home, which was monastery and a residence for the king of Mongolia around 1924. the multiple temples had some fantastic silk tapestries, some amazing statues, and some very interesting paintings. I particularly liked the paintings because most of them were busy village scenes, much like "Where's Waldo?" (Wally in Australia), where you can see all different parts of people's daily lives. For example, you'll have the drunk man following a woman carrying food, an official gathering of some sort, some horses fighting, dogs sniffing things, people (couples) rolling in the grass by the river, street vendors hawking their wares. I think a single picture like this can tell you so much about the world at the time it was made. I also noticed that the deity monster made frequent appearances in most of the paintings, sculptures, and other artwork. It is a purple-ish monster (I think) with lots of eyes, arms, and legs, usually holding a scepter. Apparently he makes sure people follow the rules. I don't think I have any pictures of the monastery because they wanted an extra 10,000 tugrik for photo privileges and I didn't think that was right. Anyway, it's better in person.

After a LONG day of walking and looking at museum things I was quite tired. I did some more work on the computer and watched a quick movie, again a very bad one. For dinner, I was quite glad to stay in since I had been out and about for so many evenings in a row. I just ate at the guest house and tried to make it an early night. However, the night club across from here (owned by the same people that run the guest house) was in full force with a local guitar competition. Apparently, every Saturday night they have all the best local acoustic guitarists compete for a 500,000 tugrik prize that will be given away at the end of the month. A few of the guest house managers were there (mostly guys from Belgium) so I went for about an hour to listen. The best was this Mongolian guy who sang a mix of local Mongolian and western songs, but had an amazing amount of energy and talent. He definitely won for the night and will be competing in the finals, which I will miss since I'll be on a plane. After it was done, everything quieted down so I headed to bed and went straight to sleep - LONG day!

G'night!