Our first real day of sightseeing in Ulaanbaatar with our guide, Rainbow. The first stop was the Chinggis Khaan Museum, a relatively new museum. The first thing we learned was that his name isn’t Genghis and it doesn’t start with a “G”. It starts with a “Ch” and pronounced like the “ch” in chance.
It was a very large and very well-organized museum with tons of artifacts and information about Mongolia that goes far beyond just Chinggis. The Mongols had many empires over the centuries. There were many interesting displays of all types. Spent a couple of hours there.
The tour ended on the top floor in a massive room that featured a massive gold statue of Chinggis. (The statue was actually made in Italy). Very impressive.
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More Chinggis Khaan Museum
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Next stop was the Gandantegchinlen Monastery complex.
The main temple featured a massive standing Buddha…
lots of prayer wheels…
and thousands of small Buddhas.
More photos of the main building interior.
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More Gandantegchinlen Complex
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After lunch (we were bad tourists...pizza all around)...
we went to the Zanabazar Fine Arts museum.
Lots of Buddhas.
And many other artifacts.
Liam tried his hand at an art project.
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More Gandantegchinlen
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And then it was off the Beatles Square. The Beatles, the iconic British Rock Band, never played in Mongolia but they were much loved here so this square is in their honor.
In the later afternoon, we attended Temen Ekh Folk performance at a beautiful, hot pink auditorium.
They had a great band,
The performances were great...
Music,
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Video 1 of music
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Video 2 of music
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some dancing in costume,
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Video 1 of dancing
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Video 2 of dancing
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Video 3 of dancing
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singing,
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Video 1 of singing
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Video 2 of singing
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and some throat singing.
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Video of throat singing
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And archery
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Video of archery
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More Tumen Ekh Folk Show
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The performance venue was only a couple of blocks from our hotel. We could see it across the plaza and just down the street. We thought about walking but decided to drive as our driver takes his job very seriously and we didn’t want to insult him by walking. And, with all the traffic, trying to cross the streets on foot looked like it could be a challenge.
Unfortunately, with the Naadam festival in full swing there
is a lot of traffic in town. The
actually driving to the hotel probably involved only about three blocks at most
due to traffic directional flow.
Unfortunately, because of all the traffic it took about an hour to get
to the hotel. What a mess.
We should have walked to the hotel.
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