Coffee in Ulaanbaatar

If you're a fan of well-made coffee as I am and wanna find a decent coffee place, I recommend the following places. Do let me know if you know of any other decent cafes.

•  Nayra Cafe - Good coffee and a smoke-free environment. It's located in a 2-story red building to the west of Barilgachdiin Talbai (Construction Worker's Square - best I can translate), or the former Tuul restaurant. About 10 mins walk north from the State Department Store.They got free wi-fi as well.
  
• Cafe Amsterdam - a stone's throw to the east from the State Department store, it's on Peace avenue. Can't miss it if you're walking along Peace avenue.
• Best'Xpresso (or Best'presso, can't remember which) - Decent place as well, cozy and quiet environment. Free wi-fi. Faces the Circus. When you're walking towards the circus from the State Department store, turn right at the very end of the housing blocks. And it's right next to the Dublin pub (the self-proclaimed first Irish pub in Mongolia)
• Grandkhaan Irish pub - I'm sure everyone knows where it is. They have a Coffee Corner. Not a lot of seats available most times though.

That's my crash course in UB coffee places. There's another cafe on the ground floor of the Gandirs building right next to the State Department Store (THE landmark of this post), but I haven't tried it yet.

Random stuff

Since I've been back, I read very little of the current news in Mongolia, preferring instead to hear firsthand accounts of what's really going on. The new government's number 1 task is to pass the infamously difficult Minerals law. As commodity prices drop around the world, the government is now seeking to close the deal on Oyu Tolgoi under the old law, which gives them a 34% of the asset rather than the proposed 51%. Whatever they decide, it has to be done in the next few months as investors get impatient. According to mongolia-web.com, some are pulling out of negotiations due to what they perceive as political instability. Unpredictability, I guess, is the right word, as our politicians, having never experienced the pressure that accompanies the discovery of sudden riches, move ahead hesitantly.

Since I have been back, I realize that Mongolia has now become just about as expensive as Singapore. The real estate boom of last year, fuelled by unbridled lending by the commercial banks, left the housing market exorbitantly expensive. Property developers in turn invested heavily into new housing developments, which now sit mostly empty since the commercial banks stopped giving out housing loans.Unfortunately, the construction craze threw what little city planning UB had to the dogs, of whom one sees fewer as compared to 5 years ago. At one point, every apartment block had a pack of stray dogs sifting through garbage. A running joke here is that ever since the Korean and the Chinese population increased, the dog population decreased in UB, though I've heard a lot of people say this with a degree of seriousness.

As winter approaches (which really should be here by now, but not yet thanks to pollution and global warming, we've had snow only a handful of times in UB and the snow on the ground disappears after half a day), the smog problem in UB is back. By January as the temperatures reach the -20s, one won't be able to see beyond 30 metres during early mornings and late evenings, especially near the 11th microdisrict where I live. The powers that be will start discussing their annual plan for smoke-free UB until spring comes and the smoke clears, by which time having accomplished the smoke-free city thanks to the advent of spring, they will wait until the next winter to resume their earnest discussions on decreasing pollution. I'm gonna post some photos later on of the haze disaster.

US Elections

I have been following the US elections (hard to avoid really, given the extensive media coverage), mainly because I am interested to see how the new administration handles its foreign policy. According to news.mn, a new administration will not drastically change the US-Mongolia relationship. What that means, to the relief of our government, is that the Millenium Challenge Account money will continue to come in. That is, according to MC Corporation website, USD 285 million over 5 years. So far over USD 1 million has been committed to various projects, with the majority going to transportation. And nearly 50% of the amount committed has been disbursed. You can read more here at their website.


Things are definitely getting very interesting now that Obama is elected. Surely nobody envies him, seeing the kind of mess he's walking into. I never did pay much attention to the US elections before, but this year it was simply unavoidable. Perhaps due to the advent of online media and the candidates exploiting these new tools to their advantage. Gotta say, I don't think I'll be using or wanting to hear the word "change" for a while.

Random Entry on Airag and Mare's milk

So while dealing with the inevitable result of airag drinking, I found myself wondering about the origins of the "pee like a racehorse" phrase. (That was probably too descriptive for those blessed with active imagination.)

The popular notion of incontinent racehorses seems to have roots in the late 1970s, when trainers began the widespread use of diuretics like Lasix (furosemide). Lasix inhibits the absorption of sodium and draws water into the bladder. This causes the horse to excrete more fluids, which could, in theory, make a horse lighter on its feet and faster on the track. Depending on the dose, a Lasix treatment could cause a horse to move several gallons of urine within an hour, which could translate to a quick drop of 10 pounds from a horse's body weight before a race. Read the article here

On the subject of airag or kumis, Wikipedia has this to say:

During fermentation, the lactose in mare's milk is converted into lactic acid, ethanol, and carbon dioxide, and the milk becomes an accessible source of nutrition for people who are lactose intolerant.
Before fermentation, mare's milk has almost 40% more lactose than cow's milk
According to one modern source, "unfermented mare's milk is generally not drunk", because it is a strong laxative.Varro's On Agriculture, from the 1st century BC, also mentions this: "as a laxative the best is mare's milk, then donkey's milk, cow's milk, and finally goat's milk..."(and, validating Varro's observations, goat's milk has even less); drinking six ounces (190 ml) a day would be enough to give a lactose-intolerant person severe intestinal symptoms. [Source]

Funnily enough, Mongolians consider the digestive crisis sometimes caused by airag a cleansing process, as opposed to an expression of their lactose intolerance.

On the subject of mare's milk,  Monenzyme, a Mongolian company, is producing cosmetic products such as day / night cream, that contain mare's milk as the active ingredient. According to them, the composition of mare's milk makes it an ideal nourishing agent for human skin. I remember when we were kids, we were told to apply airag to our skins before playing in the sun and also to apply airag to sunburnt skin afterwards.