Luang Prabang

Yesterday's cooking class wasn't quite as good as the last one. It was more of a watch-your-meal-be-cooked kind of class. Oh well. The food was still delicious and we did learn about some of the ingredients used in Lao cooking. Some ingredients come from the jungle. Like spicy wood. Add it to a stew and it gives a spicy flavour to the dish. I don't think we'll find that wood in the jungles of Ottawa.

After cooking class we hopped on a tuk-tuk with some friends and headed to a nearby waterfall. If you haven't been to Southeast Asia, tuk-tuks are the taxis of this region. In Laos, they're small pickup trucks with seats in the back. Our tuk-tuk had to stop once on the 30 km ride to the waterfall for some roadside repairs. But we did make it to the waterfall and back. We swam in the turquoise pools below the waterfall. So beautiful. Unfortunately, our batteries died on our camera and we weren't able to photograph it.

Sign seen at the waterfall:

What's out.
Slipperyway.

It's raining today so we will probably hit the museum in town.

Luang Prabang's architecture is French Colonial. Quite pretty. We'll post some pics of the town soon.

We'll be in Laos for a few more days before flying to Cambodia.

Seen on a menu in a small UB pub

Chicken tasted by Singapore.

How many people live in Singapore? Will there be any chicken left for me if I order it?

Mongolian food

As I see it there are three categories of food in Mongolia: (1) meat, (2) white foods (literal translation from the Mongolian, meaning dairy products) and (3) Russian-inspired food. These don't stay totally separate and do intersect from dish to dish.

(1) Meat.

Mongolians love meat. They love their animals but they have no problem eating them. The more fat, the better. The younger generation is starting to move away from fat a bit but they may just be telling me this to make me feel at ease when I pick the fat out.

I've asked students many times "What's your favourite food?" and inevitably the answer is buuz (steamed meat dumplings). Buuz is considered the national food and is a special occasion and any occasion food. A variation on buuz is huushuur. It's a deep-fried flat meat pancake. Think beavertail with meat inside. In canteens at lunch, I often see students and workers downing several huushuurs for lunch. Another lunch favourite is tsuivan; homemade noodles mixed with bits of carrots and cabbage and sprinkled with meat.

Meat is omnipresent in basically any dish in Mongolia. Even the salads have sausage bits. In cheaper canteens, there won't be as much meat in a dish such as tsuivan but there's still some.

(2) White foods.

These comprise of snacky things like dried milk curds and crusty butter and of the national drinks: salty milk tea and airag (fermented mare's milk). I love the tea but I could do without the mare's milk. Just recently, I tried a drink I had been avoiding for a while now: aarts. They call it a yogourt drink but it's not as pleasant as that. Think dry milk curds (some of you got to try those when you saw me in November) in hot water and mixed until the texture is fairly even but grainy. Yummy!

A popular meal is salty milk tea served in a bowl with meat dumplings. White foods are especially popular in the summer.

(3) Russian-inspired foods.

Mongolians took some Russian meals and ingredients and made it their own. They have their own version of shepherd's pie usually served with a bit of salad and a well-shaped hill of rice or two. Another popular meal is a ground beef patty topped with a fried egg and some brown sauce (with sides of salad and rice). Goulash (or gouliash in Mongolian) is an all-meat stew which often features on the menus here. Ketchup, mayonnaise and pickles abound.

Where are the vegetables??

Vegetables here come in the form of salads and carrot bits strewn about in the food. When I say salad I don't mean the green lettuce kind. I mean grated carrot or coleslaw or potato salad. Most salads are drowned in mayonnaise.

Prices (CDN$)

In a cheap lunch canteen, buuz are about 15 cents a piece. Huushuurs are 20 to 25 cents. A small plate of tsuivan is 55 cents and rarely do the meals go above $1.00. Salty milk tea is 10 cents a cup.

In other more swank places, the prices do go above the dollar mark.

The verdict

I've come to like most of the Mongolian food. It's comfort food really. But, I could do with a few more vegetables.

Camel mania!

This past weekend was all about camels. There was a camel festival in town which meant we got to see a few games of camel polo, a camel race and a camel parade.

We saw big and small camels, white camels, camels with attitudes, camels pooping, camels slipping on ice, camels weeping, you name it, we saw it.

The camels and their owners came from far and wide. Most came from the south, from the Gobi Desert where camels are more common. The polo teams represented their respective regions.

Camels in Mongolia are bactrian camels (the two-hump kind). They're hairy things and the size of some of them was impressive. I did the tourist thing and did sit on one for a little bit. They're quite comfortable...

Aaron and I added one more to our list of weird food experiences: fermented camel's milk. Description: very creamy with a slight tang. People at the festival were lining up in droves for the stuff.

Dulaankhaan or the story of Billy's unfortunate end

Once upon a time (last weekend actually), a group of 14 dedicated volunteers (and spouses) descended upon a quiet little town named Dulaankhaan. Dulaankhaan (translation: Warm-King) is about four hours north of UB towards the Russian border. Pete, one of the 14 volunteers, had once lived in Dulaankhaan and was now playing tour guide to the other 13. Pete had worked there helping a group of women start a jam cooperative.

We stayed at Dulaankhaan's newest and only hotel which also happens to be the only building in "lower" Dulaankhaan with a second storey. A family runs the hotel, a convenience store and the public transportation to and from Darkhan, Mongolia's second largest city about an hour away.

The highlight of the trip was to be a horhog party on the Saturday with the women from the jam cooperative. A horhog is a Mongolian speciality consisting of meat (usually mutton) cooked in a pot with hot stones. It's usually done outdoors in the summer but ours was done inside.

We met Billy on Saturday. Billy was a nice three-year old goat who was kind enough to sacrifice himself for our party. One minute after I petted his nose, Billy was on the ground, hooves up with a man's hand deep inside his chest snapping off the main vein (or was it the aorta?) from his heart. Billy died to an audience of shocked foreigners. The man attached to the hand then brought Billy inside, skinned him and removed the internal organs. While Billy was being cut into pieces, the women were preparing blood sausages and cleaning the stomach and intestines. Mongolians eat just about everything on a goat. It was all quite quick. And bloodless. Not one drop of blood was spilled. Finally and again to the shock of the foreigners, Billy's head went into the freezer for future use.

Billy was cooked with hot stones in a big pressurized pot. He was joined by potatoes, onions, garlic and spices. We ate, we sang and then danced. The women tried to teach us the tea cup dance. The dance is all in the shoulders but our shoulders didn't want to listen.

It was relaxing to be in the countryside away from the city. Deadly quiet too. Hours can easily go by without a car driving down the main drag in Dulaankhaan. Most residents walk or ride their horse to get around town.

I'd go back to Dulaankhaan in a second. Perhaps not to live but another weekend there would be nice...

Things I do differently in Mongolia (than I would in Canada)

1. I never put my bag on the floor (except at home).
   Mongolians don't ever set their bags on the floor as the superstition goes that if you do, you will be poor.
   
   
2. I drink hot water.
   It keeps me warm and we boil our water anyway.
   
   
3. I drink instant coffee.
   That stuff has to be cancerous. It just doesn't look right.
   
   
4. I always have toilet paper on me.
   Most public washrooms don't have toilet paper.
   
   
5. My long underwear are just another layer of skin now.
   
   
6. I point with my whole hand not with my index finger.
   We were told Mongolians don't point at each other but after a few months here, I can tell you that they do. But now, it's a habit and I can't help it. It looks weird.
   
   
7. The first question I ask at a store or restaurant is "Do you have ..." not "Where is ..." or "Can I have..."
   Never assume they have something even if it's on the menu or that you saw it last week.
   
   
8. I say hello to children and sometimes to grownups I don't know.
   Only if they say hello first. This exchange is usually followed by a giggling fit on their part especially if they have friends around.
   
   
9. I hem holy socks, gloves and other clothes needing repair.
   To save money, yes but also because we're only here for a short while and we want to travel with a light load when we leave Mongolia.

Things Aaron does differently in Mongolia

1. He has my red backpack permanently affixed to his back.
   The backpack is home to his laptop, essential working tool of the IT specialist that he is.
   
   
2. He argues with taxi drivers that try to charge us too much.
   Most cars don't have meters but even with meters there's ways to add on extra mileage. The majority though charge us the right rate.
   
   
3. He says things like Yanaa! (Oh no!) and Teem uu? (Really?)
   
   
4. He sometimes eats potatoes AND rice at a meal.
   For some reason it's perfectly acceptable to serve both on the same plate.
   
   
5. He hangs out with people that are his parents' age!
   The common bond of volunteering in Mongolia is enough to forget about age differences. Old fogies John and Mary can hike up a mountain faster than fit 20-year-olds.

Amar bain uu?

This is the question you ask people during Tsagaan Sar (literally White Moon). Tsagaan Sar is the Mongolian New Year which sometimes coincides with the Chinese New Year, like this year. The celebration lasts a few days (for some, up to a month) and consists of visits to family. Tsagaan Sar is about starting a new year but also honouring the older members of a family. Everyone visits the eldest person in a family and then keeps on hopping from one house to another. At each house there's a spread laid out that includes a sheep's rump, Mongolian cheese and dried curds, salads, chocolates and meat dumplings. Meat dumplings (or buuz) are central to the celebration and you can't leave a house without eating a few. The women prepare buuz in the hundreds if not thousands.

One thing I haven't figured out is how they know when to visit and when to receive. It's all very confusing.

Aaron and I visited the family of Aaron's co-worker on the weekend. We were invited to her grandmother's place. Her grandmother is 86 years old and was the first woman to drive in Mongolia. On the day of our visit, she wore her nicest del (a Mongolian long coat) and sported two medals for having had 10 children (one medal for every five). When we first came in, we greeted her with "Amar bain uu?", which roughly means "Are you at peace?", "Are you rested?" while placing her arms over ours. She then sniffed our cheeks.

It was nice to see a big happy family together. It made me miss my own.

The city was crazy on the weekend with everyone driving around with their families. There were even traffic jams. It was great to look out the window and see everyone dressed to the nines in either Western clothing or Mongolian clothing.

We'll post photos soon...

Raisin Juice

This is a conversation I had a few weeks ago:

Coworker: Mary*, do you want... (looks in dictionary) ...raisin juice?

Me: Do you mean grape juice? Sure, I'll have some. (She takes my cup, goes to the canteen and returns. I look at what she brought me back.)

Me: Oh, you really did mean raisin juice!

In my cup, there was this greeny-gray translucent liquid with bloated raisins hanging out in the bottom. It was pretty good, not too sweet, not too watery. Very refreshing.

The same coworker wants me to try aarts, a liquid milk curd drink. I've so far avoided it.

Raisins in Mongolian are called uzem. Grapes are ussand uzem which translates to "raisins with water". I'm guessing raisins came to Mongolia before grapes.

We often buy raisins (for the cabbage salad mainly) and once we got a pack of raisins made from grapes with seeds. Yum, crunchy raisins.

*They call me Mary at school. I just leave it be, it's easier.

How to carry meat in Mongolia

1. Loose in a shopping bag

If your boss owns a horse farm and kills one of his horses on the weekend, you may find yourself carrying horse meat home on the Monday. The meat will come in an ordinary grocery shopping bag slightly smeared with blood and will contain various cuts of meat, including two ribs. You will be told of the healthiness of horse meat before being sent on your way. You will walk the fifteen minutes home with a bag that clearly contains meat and you won't be able to contain your smile while thinking: "Look everybody! A foreigner is carrying a bag of meat!"

2. On your shoulder

Toss a sheep thigh over your shoulder and be on your way. Pass by a herd of cows on a busy street.

3. In the back seat of your car

Kill and clean a few sheep then pile them in your backseat--plastic covering sheet optional. Drive to the city.

4. Loose in a shopping bag, take two

Buy some meat at the market. Go to the market's meat grinder and have your meat ground. As you leave the market, the plastic bag handle breaks and you find yourself carefully kneeling toward the pavement to prevent your ground meat from spilling onto the street. You are not entirely successful.