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I could have swore I made this thread years ago in A/T, but I can't find it in my history. So here it is. In the late 2000s I spent 2-years living in the Gobi Desert region of Outer Mongolia as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Mongolia is a wild place with an enormous amount of history and culture that remains uniquely untouched by many aspects of our global society. I lived in the mid-southern area of the Gobi in a town that technically had a few thousand residents, but probably only had about 500 residents in the actual village. I did a lot of different jobs including teaching English and pedagogy, working with the local governments, banks, and small business, digging wells, helping herders, teaching people how to use the internet and not get STDS, and just about anything else you could imagine. Mongolia the Country Mongolia is a landlocked country is East (Central?) Asia that is smashed between Russia to the north and China to the south. "Outer Mongolia" is the official name of the sovereign nation, but there are several provinces in Northern China that are considered "Inner Mongolia" and have (or had) a significant ethnic Mongol population. It has a population of roughly 4 million people and is roughly 600,000 sq miles in area, making it the least densely populated country in the world. Livestock outnumber people at something like a 5/1 ratio. The majority of the population lives in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, which was designed by the Russians in the middle of the 20th century. It was designed to hold roughly 400,000 inhabitants and a massive, sprawling outskirt of tent cities and small buildings has cropped up around it. The majority of the population lives scattered throughout the rest of the country with a majority of them living in gers, or small, mobile tent dwellings. You are probably more familiar with the word yurt, but the Mongolian word is ger and I will correct everyone on that until I die. There is a very small population of foreigners, mostly Russian/Chinese/Korean workers in the mines. Mongolia is mostly steppes, but contains a mountains in the northwest and southwest, and comprised about half of the Gobi Desert in the south. I lived smack dab in the middle of the Gobi for most of my time there. Mongolia is one of the coldest countries in the world and winters would regularly get down to -40 for days or weeks at a time. Mongols Mongols (and yes, that is the term. "Mongol" is a person, "Mongolian" is an object) make up the ethnic majority of the population. These are primarily descendants of Chinggis Xaan's (Ghengis Khan) tribe, though there is an ethnic minority of the Khalkas tribe in the Northwest region. Their primary language in Mongolian, and they write mostly in Cyrillic script like Russians. That's a pretty poor write-up, but I feel like I never know what to talk about and I'd be happy to add to this write up if there is actual interest in this thread. I also have pictures somewhere, but I don't want to dox myself if possible. Ask me whatever, or here's a list of topics I have off the top of my head and interesting stories. Topics my Living Situation Mongol History Life as a Herder Chinggis Xaan Modernization Holidays Food & Drink Religion Politics (I'm not great on this) Ultranationalism Traditions and Superstitions How Capitalism hosed Mongolia (more than usual) Communism Stories The Wolf The Blizzard Gereoke The Prostitute Getting Beat Up (multiple times) The Shaman
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Oct 20, 2022 22:39
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E: forget the poo poo I was asking about, I wanna hear about this first please:Skwirl posted:What's the Mongol version of rock paper scissors? Pththya-lyi fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Oct 20, 2022 |
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Oct 20, 2022 22:50
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Pththya-lyi posted:Mongol rock-paper-scissors Mongols play a game which translates to "Five Fingers". It's essentially rock-paper-scissors but you use all five fingers, and each finger beats another one. So you go "one, two three" and throw down your hand with one of your five digits extended. Thumb beats Index, Index beats middle finger, middle beats ring, ring beats pinkie, pinkie beats thumb. Pretty basic way of deciding things, like a coin toss or whatever. There's also a party game where two teams sit down across from each other, lining up 1-1 with the person across from you. The "Father" goes first, and he challenges the person in front of him. Whoever wins goes on to the next opponent, and whichever team is out of players first loses the round. The (un)fun part is there's an escalating punishment for losing, which in my experience is usually drinking aairag, the national drink which is a slightly-alcoholic form of fermented horse milk. It is vile. Typically it will be like "3 drinks to the losing team" and then gets larger each round. The "Father" gets to dole out the drinks to his team, and when I was there it tended to be "haha let's make the foreigner drink them all!". I have multiple memories of vomiting bitter, thick milk into an "outhouse" that was little more than two planks over a fifteen foot hole of poo poo and piss which was about 5 inches from the boards themselves. There is also a game called "Denbe" which I never got down. it's sort of a musical challenge where you sing this song and you have to keep the rhythm of the song and you take turns singing a number between 1-10. You have to throw out a number of fingers (1-5) each time the song loops, your opponent does the same, and the goal is to guess the total number of digits extended in any given round. It was hard as gently caress and I never got the hang of it.
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Oct 20, 2022 23:01
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Here to hear about your living situation first, but I won't pretend I'm not hoping...Yorkshire Pudding posted:The Prostitute ...aren't a single story.
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Oct 20, 2022 23:02
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I'd love to just hear broadly about the natural world they live in and move through. The weather, the flora and fauna you see, what it feels like to be that remote for that long, being in a ger when it's crazy cold or storming outside, etc. I suppose that includes the wolf and the blizzard, but I'm also just curious about the whole natural experience generally.
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Oct 20, 2022 23:07
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Here are so photos I found. I couldn't find one of the inside of my ger, but I'll keep looking. Here's the village I trained in for a few weeks, it was much more northern and more steppe than desert. https://imgur.com/9p0gI9H Here's my village, this is right near the edge looking in. People lived in Hashaas which are basically yards. There were some houses, but most people who had a house also had a ger. https://imgur.com/vAPGea2 My ger is on the right and my "brother", who I lived with for the whole time, is on the left. He lived with his wife and young son. I don't have a photo, but for reference my shoulders are about as tall as the top edge of that tent before it slopes up. The door is basically a hobbit door. https://imgur.com/hgkx02T My herder friends lived waaay out of the town with their herds. This was the ger we stayed in. https://imgur.com/PZH59bW My herder friend's adorable little kids, also a goat. https://imgur.com/LKobAtW Couple of dudes wrangling a horse to break it https://imgur.com/Zv4opcS They succeeded. I've seen a single mongol dude headlock a pony into submission before https://imgur.com/B3srAQF Me (face covered) and my brother on a "mountain" celebrating the coming of the new year https://imgur.com/eWFliOA The coal I used to heat my ger was usually just delivered in big loving rocks and dumped outside my ger, so I'd just get to go smash it up. https://imgur.com/mWatx2n Here is my brother's ger being constructed, and it is actually a lot bigger than mine. His was a "6-pole", and mine was a "4-pole". Mine was probably 30% smaller in area and height. https://imgur.com/A6adrCb Tsagaan Tsar is the big Mongolian holiday, basically Christmas, New Year's, and Thanksgiving in one. As a young person you go visit all your older relatives and you're supposed to take three shots of vodka and eat three dumplings (called "Buuz", and I will argue that this is a Mongol dish and every dumpling you ever eat came from this recipe). I do not remember much of that day. https://imgur.com/VVf6hFK Yorkshire Pudding fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Oct 20, 2022 |
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Oct 20, 2022 23:23
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IshmaelZarkov posted:Here to hear about your living situation first, but I won't pretend I'm not hoping... Those are all different stories. I lived in a ger with a family in a ger next to mine. It was tiny, like the size of a small bathroom. No water, just a sink I could fill with water and an outhouse outside. Electricity was generally available, but a lot of times it only came on past sunset. I had a fridge, oddly enough, which I never used. It was so cold most of the time I just left things in my "ping", which is like a little metal entryway to store meat and stuff. It was heated by an iron stove which took up the center (and tallest point) of the ger, and I had to make several fires a day out of camel dung and coal. My bed was basically a piece of plywood on a metal frame, and was about a foot too short for me to stretch out on. There was nowhere in the ger I could stand up straight. incogneato posted:I'd love to just hear broadly about the natural world they live in and move through. The weather, the flora and fauna you see, what it feels like to be that remote for that long, being in a ger when it's crazy cold or storming outside, etc. Ooh yeah, that's a big one. Well I don't want to be like 'Ah yes, the Mongol people are very connected with nature" or some bullshit. But there isn't a whole lot of "inside vs outside" cultural dynamics. Ger's were just a warm place to be, and property was quite communal so I'd constantly have randos enter my home. In the Gobi there's not a lot of flora. "Camel grass" is about the only thing that grows and it feeds most of the animals. It gets extremely cold, even in the desert, and winters are basically September-May. It regularly hits the -40s in actual winter and Mongols measure that time by what they call the "9 9s". 81 days marked in each 9 days, with the coldest one (which is like late January) being the most extreme. Each 9 has a "This thing will freeze during this 9". The most severe one is "The horns of baby goats will freeze during this 9". Animals are all over. Cows would just hangout in my yard, horses that aren't broken just run around. And dogs, oh man, dogs. They are both tools and protectors for herders, and there's really only one breed that can survive. They call it "Bankhar" and it just looks like a mean, shaggy, black wolf. Oddly enough there are randomly 1-2 St Bernards among the group. The story I heard was that someone hundreds of years ago imported them to sell and some got loose, and since they are basically the only breed that can survive those temperatures they are still around. Packs of dogs in town get real bad during the winter when food is scarce, and they will maim or kill people sometimes. Lots of places do an annual "dog hunt" to thin out the most dangerous in winter. I chose not to participate in that. As for the remoteness, it's hard. It's a kind of isolation that's hard to describe. I've always been good at being alone, but after months it gets to you. When it's dark 18 hours a day and -30 outside your tent, there's not a lot to do. I had a few moments of impending madness, but I slogged through it. Lots of people turn to drink or other habits.
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Oct 20, 2022 23:33
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Is horseriding still really important over there? What sort of things do people do for fun? Do people still do (horseback?) archery?
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Oct 21, 2022 01:32
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Hyperlynx posted:Is horseriding still really important over there? Fairly important, but much less so. If you live in the city, you probably never ride horses but you know how to. Countryside folk still, in my experience, get taught real early even if they don't actually ride much. The Steppe is loving huge, and oftentimes people can live 50+ miles outside the nearest village or have herd ranges that cover hundreds of miles. Motorcycles have largely replaced horses as the most convenient means of travel, but you either need to live real close to a village that either has a gas station or someone to deliver fuel. Most real herders have a motorcycle but horses are more convenient for everyday work. Hyperlynx posted:What sort of things do people do for fun? Not wildly different from anywhere else. Basketball, volleyball, and soccer are real popular. Drinking with friends, kareoke, driving around. One really weird thing is that because Mongolia is super flat and has like 300+ sunny days a year they got cell phone internet towers in like 2010 and they are everywhere. There was a small internet cafe in my town and I constantly saw kids playing Counterstrike and DOTA. Card games and Board Games and stuff too. One thing that cracked me up is I would have people show up and be like "Hey wanna go have a drink?" and we'd hop in their truck and drive 100 yards to the edge of town and drink there, despite us all having homes. The "Gereoke" story I mentioned above was a hilarious incident where I got real plastered with some friends and they were like "Let's go kareoke!". We hopped in their truck with like 7 dudes crammed in and drove for like 45 minutes just into the Steppe. We finally rolled up on a trio of small gers and my buddy got out and hailed the owner. Owner came out and they talked for a second and then we walked into one of the gers and it was like a tiny kareoke bar. A little machine powered by a generator he cranked on, tons of lovely ambient lighting, and he brought us out beers on a plate. It cracked me up and we sat there and belted out tunes for a few hours. They were either Chinese or Korean made machines, so there was always a handful of Western songs but the lyrics were always displayed in another language so I'd always have to pick things I knew by heart. Lots of "Country Roads Take Me Home" and "Gangsters Paradise". Hyperlynx posted:Do people still do (horseback?) archery? Yeah, as a hobby. They practice the "Three Manly Sports" of archery, horseback riding, and wrestling. Every summer they have a festival called Naadam where people from across the country compete in those sports. Women are allowed to do archery but that's it. I almost got ran over by a horse one year cause I was at the end of the horse race and ran over near the finish line to pet the winning horse and wipe it's sweat on my neck (for luck!) and like 10 others barelled right past me. Oh, one more cool thing: Wolf Teeth. Wolf teeth are seen as lucky, but you can't just buy one. You have to kill a wolf or steal it from someone else. Lot's of Mongols will wear them (but only below the waist for some virility thing) and if you steal one without getting caught it's yours. It's symbolic of wolves being predators that can both fight well and are stealthy. My brother was a loving god at the game and I would try to get his when he was dead asleep or passed out and I swear he had a 6th sense. I end up getting one from one of my other friends and I still have it somewhere.
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Oct 21, 2022 01:55
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What was the language, and how did you learn it?
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Oct 21, 2022 03:32
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Arsenic Lupin posted:What was the language, and how did you learn it? They speak Mongolian. It is a pretty strange language in terms of its structure. It is called an Agglutinative language and shares structure with Korean and Japanese languages. It's very guttural, and if you've seen Game of Thrones the way Dothraki language sounds is pretty spot on Mongolian. Resources for learning Mongolian are scarce, so I basically had a real lovely guidebook they gave me before I left America and a English-to-Mongolian dictionary. Once we arrived in country we had about 7 days of basic "Here's how not to die" training provided by Peace Corps, some of which were very basic words and phrases. I remember going to my training site after about 9 days in country and meeting my host family, who I would be living with for our 10 weeks of training, and literally being able to say "Hello", "My name is Yorkshire Pudding", "I like bread". My host mom was cool as poo poo and I still message her on Facebook sometimes. We spent 10 weeks training in a village in a group of like 10 volunteers. We spent 8 hours a day in class, 5 which was language training and 3 which was general culture/work stuff. We had two Mongol teachers who spoke English. Well, one spoke English, the other got that job because...I don't know? Funny side story, one of the teachers was a young woman who another Peace Corps Volunteer ended up marrying. I officiated their unofficial Mongol wedding in-country (to the protests of Peace Corps Staff who chided us repeatedly about how we weren't allowed to do that, it wasn't sanctioned by Peace Corps, it wasn't legally binding, blah blah) and they moved back to the states and got married officially later. They just celebrated their 10 year anniversary recently! There's a weird thing two about Peace Corps Volunteers marrying each other. Not like people who served in the same country, but people who served in entirely different countries in different times ending up marrying each other. I'm sure it's probably a shared experience/interest type thing, but it's freaky how many former volunteers I know who ended up married to someone who served in Namibia five years earlier or whatever. Also, totally unrelated, but a funny "in-group" kind of stereotype is that African PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) are totally insufferable and elitist towards people who served in other places. For some reason there's a sort of status, I guess, about Africa being the "real" Peace Corps and everything else being "easy mode"? I met a few in my travels and I have to admit there was a bit of a "Oh, Mongolia huh? Yeah we're serving in [whatever African country]  ". No offense to anyone reading this who did serve in Africa! There is very much a "Posh Corps" joke that's true. When I was serving there was a viral video going around of a PCV in, I think, Thailand who made this big video complaining about being called Posh Corps and she was like "It's hard here, sometimes the beach is closed and my wifi goes down and the store is out of fresh chicken!". It was widely mocked in Mongolia. But even in Mongolia there was a lot of grandstanding about who had it "hardest". Some people lived in apartments with cable internet and hot water and showers and stuff, while some people lived in gers with the nearest water well a mile away (yours truly). I will say, you get a "choice" of your site near the end of training, and I got called in by Peace Corps staff because I told them I wanted a site in the Gobi with no other volunteers nearby that no one had even been to. They were like 'Hey we have a site that's been requesting a volunteer for like ten years but nobody has wanted to go there, are you sure?". But jokes on them because my site ruled and I loved it. I just couldn't understand people who were like "Oh I joined Peace Corps so I could hang out with other Americans and have a movie theater nearby" or whatever, but that's just me.Anyway, The other teacher disappeared after about 6 weeks in after he had some mental breakdown. I remember that he got in trouble because he made some sort of painted sign that said "MY WIFE IS A WHORE" and paraded around outside her work place. So we had about 10 weeks of language training before we went to our official site. I'm pretty poo poo at languages overall, but I'm pretty good at...I don't know, social understanding? Reading body language? I could usually tell what people were trying to articulate, even in foreign languages, but I'm just terrible at grammar and producing words. There's a weird phenomenon I have heard other ex-pats say where you get better at languages when you're drunk, and I was drunk a lot. So maybe that was it. I had a buddy who was the inverse where he had a real good grasp of the language in that he could speak very well, but just had no ear for listening to it. We always joked that when we were together we were a whole person. When I went to my official site I could parse together a few phrases but mostly relied on just sussing out what people were talking about in conversations. In Peace Corps they have this rating system where you take a test before you go to site, and before you leave, and you get rated from 1-5. You basically need a 4 to pass, or you have to continue training (you get to go to site anyway so it doesn't matter), but even a 4 is super easy to get. I think i got a 3. A 1 is essentially fluent, or very close to. I heard that in the history of Peace Corps Mongolia only a handful of people only ever got a 1, even after 2-3 years of being in country. So it's a hard language, coming from English, by any standards.
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Oct 21, 2022 04:46
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Were the Americans competing with an active Chinese or Russian cultural presence as well? Did you ever experience wildfires? Any wacky experiences with obsolete Soviet equipment?
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Oct 21, 2022 14:08
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Thank you for writing all this, it’s amazing! I guess my question would be about ultranationalism: what do modern mongols think about their ancient empire? Are there people who see it as a lost golden era? Does it inspire chauvinism? How is the ruthless violence* of the Mongol hordes looked back on? *I’m not passing judgement on what happened 700 years ago of course. But that is the very widely held view of the Mongol empire.
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Oct 21, 2022 14:25
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Decoy Badger posted:Were the Americans competing with an active Chinese or Russian cultural presence as well? Interesting question. So in short, I'd say no. There's no competition, because the battle is over. I think there's a bit of history I need to explain to really articulate this. Brief history lesson: In the 1920 the Chinese basically took control of Outer Mongolia by force. There is a longstanding animosity between China and Mongolia, for obvious reasons, and Mongols (generally speaking) really, really don't like China. As people told me about the story, Mongols basically looked at their situation and realized they either had to side with the Russians or the Chinese, and that was an easy choice for them. Historians can correct me or fill in details, but basically the Mongols kind of let Russia in and they successfully kicked out the Chinese army and that established the current Outer/Inner Mongolia borders. There's actually a wild character from this time named Baron Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg who thought he as Chinggis Xaan reborn and wanted to kick off a new Mongol Empire. He was also an paranoid, insane, torture-loving maniac and I highly recommend reading the Bloody White Baron by James Palmer. So Russia controlled Mongolia and over the next forty years started just tearing down everything historically and culturally Mongol. Burned most of the Buddhist temples, tried to erase Chinggis Xaan from history, stole a bunch of Mongol artifacts (including the Black Spear of Chinggis Xaan, a war artifact carried by the man himself throughout his conquests) and basically tried to suppress their entire history. They also kind of used Mongolia as a pilot program for true Communism. The Society Union built a ton of factories and set up supply yards and did all this industry stuff that was basically completely subsidized by the Soviet Union. That went on until the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s. Once that happened, Russia basically said "Uh okay you guys are on your own, good luck!" and Mongolia began the slow transition into the democratic capitalist society it is now. For the last 25~ years they have been trying to integrate themselves into the world economy more, and this was kicked off in America when George W. visited in like 2002 or something. So they have been receiving Western goods and services for a few decades now. However, unlike a lot of other countries that have really gorged themselves on Western media, goods, and cultural practices, Mongolia has been really good about taking what it wants and rejecting the rest. The architecture is Russian but there's not a huge influence of Russian culture or ideas. Their goods are Chinese or Japanese but they actively poo poo talk those countries and the way they behave. Everyone drinks Coca-Cola and has an iPhone, but Mongols see American Capitalism as a major reason for their current ills. However, Russia does *completely* own their country's economy, which is probably a really important story to tell as well. So all that is to say, Mongolia is really unique in my mind. Unlike Japan, which in my experience basically took all this Western stuff and just made it 'Japanese', Mongolia just straight rejected every aspect of outside influence while still trying to benefit from the ideas and stuff. Decoy Badger posted:Did you ever experience wildfires? Nope, never even heard about them while I was there. Again, I was in the desert so if a fire started it wouldn't really have anywhere to go. My one fire story is that I was visiting my friend in the provincial capital and we were going to go ice skating. Basically they just had a big indentation is cement they filled with water and let freeze. So a group of us are walking to this "ice rink" and as we get there we see a smoking pile of ash on the ground. One of the Mongols looks at it and basically goes "Welp, not skating today". Apparently that pile of ash had been a ger that contained all of the ice skates, and it just...burned to the ground? Unsurprisingly, if your ger made of felt and cloth catches fire it's gonna go down quick and there's no real way to stop it. I had to laugh at that because, as with most thing, the Mongol response was to just shrug and be like "Welp, that's the way it is". Decoy Badger posted:Any wacky experiences with obsolete Soviet equipment? Besides motorcycles, the main transport vehicle were these Russian microbuses they called a "Meekr". They were these 1950s era little 6-seater buses that were goddamn everywhere. I Swear the Russians just dumped all of their old equipment in Mongolia in like the 80s and they have just held up so well that everyone still uses them. There were a few different varieties, but most of them were started by opening a grade on the front of the car and sticking in this crowbar looking thing and just cranking it in circles until the engine started. They broke down constantly, but I never saw one actually die. I swear that every Mongol in the country has a basic knowledge of car repair cause anytime one would break down all the dudes would jump out and go work on it and get it working again. ***Note for myself to tell the Hi-Ho Silver Mining Corporation story, which kind of explains why Mongolia is so poor despite having immense natural resources and land. ***Also tell the "diplomatic incident" caused by Johnny Walker Red
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Oct 21, 2022 14:49
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Such Fun posted:Thank you for writing all this, it’s amazing! A lot of Mongols look back on the Mongol Empire and kind of think "We could do that again if we wanted". There is still a very strong hatred to China, and there are some war hawks who think a war with them would be a good idea. I lol'd when a guy told me "One Mongol could beat 300 Chinese!" and I was like "Even if that were true, you still lose that war". Chinggis Xaan is as alive in Mongolia as he was in the 13th century. His face, name, and likeness are everywhere. Things that he said offhandedly are still taken as law today. There are intense superstitions and taboos that make no sense in the modern society but are still held as extremely important cultural values to many Mongols. Only walk clockwise in your ger, don't grow a beard before you are 33, never eat while you are walking. I'm not sure if people really "pine for the golden era", and a lot of people understand that the Xaan was, at his core, just a ruthless conqueror. But I think it's easier to idolize him because it's not like anyone there is really benefiting from what he did 700 years ago. No one really cares that he was ruthless, and Mongols also know that the Xaan and the Mongol Empire gets kind of a bad rap because they were "outsiders". Xaan was brutal, yes, but in my opinion no more so than Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and all those other conquerors. The Only difference was that he was better at it, and since he didn't make an effort to write histories about himself and in fact he did the opposite. He refused letting pretty much anyone depict him. All of our references about him are from people he conquered, which accounts for a lot of his image problem and false attributions of things he said. And chauvinism would be a nice way of putting it. Mongolia is basically a patriarchy, especially in the rural areas. The oldest male is king, and he has the first and last word. It blew my mind how many families I know where the husband didn't work, and the wife made all the money and raised the kids, but the husband was the boss and there was no question about it. There is a lot of domestic abuse. When I arrived in Mongolia I considered myself a cultural relativist. By the time I left I was not. One of the biggest issues Mongolia faces as a modern nation is it's conflicting ideas of a man's role versus the economic realities of living in a capitalist society.
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Oct 21, 2022 15:00
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:A lot of Mongols look back on the Mongol Empire and kind of think "We could do that again if we wanted". There is still a very strong hatred to China, and there are some war hawks who think a war with them would be a good idea. I lol'd when a guy told me "One Mongol could beat 300 Chinese!" and I was like "Even if that were true, you still lose that war". Chinggis Xaan is as alive in Mongolia as he was in the 13th century. His face, name, and likeness are everywhere. Things that he said offhandedly are still taken as law today. There are intense superstitions and taboos that make no sense in the modern society but are still held as extremely important cultural values to many Mongols. Only walk clockwise in your ger, don't grow a beard before you are 33, never eat while you are walking. This reply was wild! I had intended to mean nationalist chauvinism, not even thinking about gender. You addressed both - I had actually wanted to ask specifically if any Mongols thought they could conquer a new empire but considered the question too outlandish. Ha! If you’re not tired of it yet, I’d love to hear about : - Religion: How devout or pious is the average Mongolian Buddhist? Or is it often performative/cultural/social? And does it take a place in the national identity? - How Mongolia got extra hosed by capitalism: I can imagine a dozen ways an economy that depends on its herds struggles in a capitalist world. Kindly depress me.
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Oct 21, 2022 19:51
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Great thread, thanks for sharing your experience! A few years ago I considered doing the Mongol Rally (https://www.theadventurists.com/mongol-rally/) but doing it officially was kind of a pain in the rear end due to the fixed dates, waitlist, the fee they demand in return for nothing, etc). But from the brief preliminary research I've done, it seemed like the actual Mongolia part was by far the most difficult since it's extremely empty, there are no maintained roads, and services and parts are difficult to come by. Was that the case in your experience too, especially since you were out in the boonies? You mentioned internet and phones, I guess communication infrastructure was already somewhat decent when you were there? I think by the time I make it there, I'd be out of vacation days and would have to get back to work (remotely).
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Oct 21, 2022 20:58
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it's called airaag because that's the sound you make after drinking too much of it
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Oct 21, 2022 21:06
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Such Fun posted:- Religion: How devout or pious is the average Mongolian Buddhist? Or is it often performative/cultural/social? And does it take a place in the national identity? A few things on this. First off, I am a Buddhist, and not a very good one. I say I am a Buddhist like most Christians are Christian. I believe in it, it makes sense to me, I try and follow it's guidelines, but I'm overall not very consistent with it. This is how I felt most Mongol Buddhists were. I didn't hear people talk about it openly a lot, but there was a lot of iconography around homes and stuff. My village also had a sizable Buddhist Temple in it, so it may have been a case where people were a little more devout cause they had a big place with monks and stuff nearby. I knew a few monks who would be drunk as poo poo on weekends and on the prowl for ladies, so if you have a conception that all Buddhist monks are some type of way, I assure you that is not the case everywhere. But even their Buddhism is very centered around Chinggis Xaan. He was known for his religious tolerance, and there is a lot of suggestion that his sort of adoption of, or support for, Buddhism was mostly a political move. During his time there were quite a few Buddhists, but also a lot of traditional shamanism/animism followers. He likely toed the line with both of these religions to ensure that their leaders, and thus their followers, stayed loyal and didn't cause any problems in his conquest. That kind of cultural practice stuck around even 800 years later, so you see a lot of Mongols who will go to the temple during the holy days or special events but not do too much otherwise. Again, this was my perception and I never got too deep into religious discussions with most people. Such Fun posted:- How Mongolia got extra hosed by capitalism: I can imagine a dozen ways an economy that depends on its herds struggles in a capitalist world. Kindly depress me. This is a big one, and let me start by saying I am not an economist or a political junkie, and all of this stuff is from memory and stories I heard while I was in country. So if it's misleading or straight up fiction, I apologize, its just what I was told by various different groups of people throughout my time there. So, when the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s Mongolia basically got cut loose from Communism instantly. On one hand they regained a lot of independence as a country and as a people, but their entire economy had been propped up by Russian money. Factories staffed by Mongols and run by Russians were suddenly without leadership, established supply chains dried up, and lots of government positions that had been dictated by Russia just kind of opened up. So Mongolia, which had basically not really had any kind of real economy beyond just pastoral herding life, was dropped free fall into democracy and capitalism. They spent the next decade establishing a functioning democracy and trying to get an economy started, which to their credit they really did without any major revolutions or whatever. Largely because of Russian influence and support, which will come around later. Now Mongolia is actually incredibly rich in natural resources, specifically mines. They have some of the largest deposits of silver and copper in the world, as well as enormous reserves of rare earth metals like zinc. However, Mongols have traditionally had a cultural taboo against digging into the earth, and combined with no real infrastructure to extract minerals, it was mostly untouched. By the early 2000s the developed world was looking at Mongolia with dollar signs in their eyes. America, Russia, Japan, and China all started trying to figure out what the play was and how they might benefit from this. The Mongols basically told China to gently caress off, but they started courting everyone else. Lots of companies and governments started putting feelers out, making some tentative deals, and putting some money into building up the mining industry. But no one quite knew much about Mongolia, or Mongols, or how they did business, so nobody wanted to be the first in to what was effectively a brand new country on the global economic scene. Eventually, a mining conglomerate called Hi-Ho Silver started making big plays. They started pouring money into Mongolia to start open mines and cut deals, and the Mongolian government was loving it. They were suddenly the bell of the ball and everyone wanted to be their friend. As I understand it, a bunch more deals started getting made from Japan, Russia, Europe, and everyone else who wanted to get in early on their huge natural resources. But they were all waiting on Hi-Ho Silver to really commit and sign the deal before they jumped in too. So the deal was well on its way, a lot of terms being discussed, and Hi-Ho Silver had already poured a large amount of money into Mongolia. So the deal was drawn up, all the terms were pretty much agreed upon, and all that was left to dot the I's and cross the T's. From what I heard, the deal was actually pretty fair. Hi-Ho Silver would provide all the infrastructure and leadership and get a percentage of the profit and guaranteed trade deals or whatever. Mongolia would get the lion's share of profits, all Mongol citizens would receive a share of the profits as well, and there would be guaranteed jobs for Mongols in the new mines. All and all a pretty good deal. However, right at the last second, the Mongolian government tried to pull a fast-one. Maybe they got greedy, maybe they thought that it wasn't a big deal to change the terms, or maybe they just didn't quite get how capitalism worked. They basically said "We want more or we walk away. Japan, Russia, and China are all knocking on our doors so it's a sellers market!". Except it wasn't. All those countries were holding off on going all in for just this reason, and when they heard what happened they pulled out. As did Hi-Ho Silver. They said "gently caress it, we'll eat the loss of investment so far. Have fun". That sent the Mongolian government into a tailspin, and they basically had to come crawling back to Hi-Ho Silver with their hat in their hands. And Hi-Ho Silver was happy to renegotiate the deal with way worse terms for the Mongols. So that happened, and obviously on a macroeconomic scale that had enormous negative repercussions for Mongolia and it's people. But that was all high-level, behind-closed-doors type stuff that the average person would have never known about, if not for what happened after. A few years pass and the mines are starting to open, lots of investors have jumped in, people are getting excited. I don't know if this was Hi-Ho Silver or one of the other corporations, but one of them had an agreement that basically offered every Mongol family a certain amount of stock, or shares, or something. These stocks were given to each family, as far as I can tell literally in paper form, and they were worth a certain dollar (or whatever currency) amount. Now if you were financially savvy and got these stocks you would probably say, "Well these mines haven't even opened yet, so these stocks should rise in value. I'll hold on to them for a few years". But the average Mongol didn't know that. Most people probably didn't know what the Stock Market was, they just knew they were going to get some money from foreigners because these mines were opening. Well in the short period between the stocks being given out and the mines actually opening, somebody (I don't know who) made a devious play. They sent people to everyone's homes they could and said "Hey, you got your mine stocks! You know they're worth $500 right? We'll buy them from you!". So all these families sold their stocks, because why wouldn't you, and whatever agents of capitalism made the play bought back an enormous amount of these stocks. The mines open, these stocks explode in value, and the country quickly learned they had been hosed. There was huge backlash towards foreigner companies, whose response was basically  So every since then those mines have been pumping out big bucks and every mining corporation who got in early has been raking in the profits, and most Mongols don't see a dime of that. Very reasonably, there is still an immense amount of distrust of both foreigners and the whole economic system in general. The last part of that is something I don't understand, but I heard it a lot. 99% of Mongolia's GDP is mining. And they have this "Ministry of Mining" that oversees it. So basically every penny of revenue that is made from mining, or mining tariffs, or export taxes or whatever, goes through the Ministry of Mining. Now in a normal government you'd think it'd be like "The elected officials take that tax revenue and decide how it funds public services, schools, etc". But nope, other way around. The Ministry of Mining has a handful of appointed directors, and they basically decide where the money goes. And, wouldn't you know it, those appointed officials tend to be real friendly with Russia. Real good friends. So the only real tax revenue the country has gets like 95% gobbled up in "foreign investments", and the remaining crumbs go to schools and roads and all that poo poo countries might need to survive. So not only did Mongolia lose out on most of the profits from selling the resources that belong to them, whatever amount they do get is basically whooshed away by the Ministry of Mining before it can ever benefit them.
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Oct 21, 2022 21:46
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cool thread, thanks! Your peace corps experience sounds extremely different than mine (Dominican Republic), and it's always so interesting to hear. Did the peace corps give you a pretty loose job and oversight? I get the sense that you were just out there doing your thing. How often would you go to "HQ"? Did your family/friends ever visit?
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Oct 21, 2022 22:12
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...how do you pronounce Genghis Khan/Chinggis Xaan? Looks like I've been getting it very wrong all this time!
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Oct 22, 2022 01:55
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One of the things I know about the Gobi Desert is that contains world‐class fossil beds. These are of great interests to scientists, but unfortunately also of interest to thieves, smugglers, and foreign collectors. Did you have any experiences with such people or with the fossils themselves?
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Oct 22, 2022 08:21
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You are a very prolific writer! That was a long rear end answer, and I enjoyed all of it. I’m imagining that if this soft money grab hadn’t panned out so well for foreign powers there could have been Does Mongolia have any means to defend itself against a modern army? Is guerrilla warfare an option in a desert? Are they under the protection of any alliance?
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Oct 23, 2022 12:17
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Such Fun posted:You are a very prolific writer! That was a long rear end answer, and I enjoyed all of it. Thank you! Again, caveat that I’m not a military or political junkie, so this is my personal opinion. Short answer, no, Mongolia does not have a significant military force. They sent like a dozen dudes to Iraq to help America I think. I saw some military dressed people around when I was there but it seemed more like a thing young people were doing for work or whatever. I have heard from some people I knew in/around the French military that there was a fair amount of Mongols in the French Foreign Legion and they were generally considered tough bastards. As for guerrilla warfare: maybe? The modern nation of Mongolia has remained intact because 1.) it acts as a huge geographical buffer state between two enormous world powers 2.) there isn’t poo poo worth there taking. I mean as I said, Russia basically already takes all its valuable national resources so no one needs to invade. It’s also got like 3% arable land and is generally inhospitable to everything except the few species that evolved to live through -40 winters, so no one in their right mind would want to occupy it. I heard more than one Mongol say something like “why would any foreigner want to be here?”. Not in a “this place sucks!” Way, just because even Mongols know how difficult it is to survive there. And I’m not sure about the alliances. If I had to guess I would say everyone in the area knows that it’d piss off Russia to rock the boat.
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Oct 24, 2022 01:36
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Platystemon posted:One of the things I know about the Gobi Desert is that contains world‐class fossil beds. I know that the area with the most fossils was south of me, but I never went there. Never heard of any thievery, but there's a funny story where Nicolas Cage bought like a fully intact T-Rex skeleton, and then it turns out if was illegally taken from Mongolia so they complained and he gave it back to them. Tree Bucket posted:...how do you pronounce Genghis Khan/Chinggis Xaan? So the most direct translation is "Chinggis Xaan", which sounds like "Ching-gis Hawn". "Ghengis Khan" became popularized because most of the contemporary(ish) writers about Chinggis Xaan were Persian, and I guess there is no "Ch" sound in Persian, so the closest sound is "G". Thesaurus posted:cool thread, thanks! In Mongolia work was really dictated by the "Host Country Organization" (HCO). Mine was a school/local government. So they petitioned for a PCV and then said 'We want them for this work". Once I got there it was pretty loose, I basically just did whatever they needed help with. I had virtually no oversight, as it was a 11-14 hour bus drive from my village to the capital. They visited twice in 2 years. I went to the capital once every few months, mostly to dick around and meet friends. I tried to get my family to visit and they said hell no. Same with friends. I was fresh out of college though and most of them were broke 20 year olds, so no surprise there. Mongolia is real hard to travel around, also. You really need a guide and a translator, and even then the chances of you breaking down 200 miles from anywhere is high. Very high. It tends to be a "Extreme Tourism!!!!" type destination.
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Oct 24, 2022 23:56
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Thank you for sharing your experience! I spent two weeks in Mongolia (outside of Ulaanbaatar in the Altai mountain range) in 2018 but we were primarily learning about wildlife conservation issues. Seeing herds of takhis running free knowing there used to be only 11 breeding animals all in zoos is amazing. There weren’t any Pallas cats captured on our trail cams though  I would go back to Mongolia in a heartbeat. Is there anything you really miss from your time there?
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Oct 26, 2022 18:14
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Mongolia is really cool and I've always wanted to visit, so thanks for this thread. You said cell service is really widespread, so I'm curious what sort of media people in the villages like. American TV? Korean dramas? Is there a robust local film and music industry?
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Oct 26, 2022 18:28
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Really cool thread, OP! As someone who loves cooking and trying different foods, I'd like to know more about the culinary culture. What was a typical day like, meal-wise? Anything you absolutely loved/hated? You mentioned only 3% of the land being arable, so what do most folks eat, and where does it come from? Thanks!
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Nov 1, 2022 16:16
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What you said about domestic violence is interesting. I've heard that it's much safer to travel Mongolia as a woman than as a man because foreign men get targeting for beatings, but women regardless of nationality are highly respected. Maybe this is just old information. It was told to me by one of my professors who lived in Mongolia for a year back in the 90s. It could also just be a cultural difference between settled people are herders. He was living and working with a herding family. What are your thoughts about women traveling Mongolia? Was my professor right at all or was he way off? I'd also like to hear about the times you got beaten up and why.
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Nov 2, 2022 08:31
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Kenning posted:Is there a robust local film and music industry?
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Nov 7, 2022 20:23
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Sorry for the delay, didn’t bookmark my own thread and forgot about it!Instant Jellyfish posted:I would go back to Mongolia in a heartbeat. Is there anything you really miss from your time there? I miss my friends there, and how new and exciting everything was. But I was also 22, so part of that is just missing being young. But then I remember how many freezing nights I spent huddled in a sleeping bag praying my fire would stay lit through the night. I’ll go back someday, but I’ve got young kids now so it probably won’t be for a while. Kenning posted:Mongolia is really cool and I've always wanted to visit, so thanks for this thread. You said cell service is really widespread, so I'm curious what sort of media people in the villages like. American TV? Korean dramas? Is there a robust local film and music industry? A lot of K-Pop and K-Dramas. Lots of Chinese and Japanese shows. Didn’t see much western stuff there, though I would hear My Heart Will Go On and Gangster’s Paradise on the radio pretty often. I’m not sure how big live music is in the city, but there’s some sweet music from there. Altan Urag is my favorite Mongol rock, I got to see them several times at a bar in the capital.
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Nov 7, 2022 20:33
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Thanks for the thread. I went to Cameroon about 11 years ago visiting someone who did Peace Corps in a little mountain village like an hour from Dschang, spent 3 days there and then a week in the general area. It seemed like a pretty chill place to spend two years; socially isolating maybe, but the weather was beautiful every day of the year at that altitude and latitude, and the local country food was fine. I guess you can never really know how someone else’s experiences are, but it gave me the impression I’d sure as gently caress be poor in Cameroon than in Sao Paolo or Detroit. I guess there’s no real opportunity for the locals though. My tent flooded so I spent 3 days with a kid about my age (early 20s) who has gone to Mali for 3 years at age 16 to learn how to be a blacksmith, but turns out there’s still like fuckall professional work to do as a blacksmith. His dad / the host family was the village shaman, which was neat. He showed me his herb garden but I didn’t know what anything was besides tobacco. Anyway not to distract from your story too much, just my one first hand interaction with a peace corps destination. I’m not really sure what my friend accomplished in two years there besides failing to teach anyone English and her learning French, but I guess maybe it was a good use of foreign investment. She’s still a teacher at international schools in "undesirable" postings like Bamako and Islamabad. She’s got two kids and also married another peace corps guy who got an african posting. I actually didn’t know her that well, I ran into her at a bar in Nairobi right after her posting finished and she said hey come to Cameroon (she stayed like five years after finishing peace corps) so I did like a year later. That was basically the 100% full extent of our knowledge of each other at that point too. Seems like a neat program. Oh now I do have a relevant question: do you feel like you accomplished anything concrete? Saladman fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Nov 10, 2022 |
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Nov 10, 2022 22:56
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this is a great thread. i'd love to hear more about the herder lifestyle. no specific questions really, just, what does the average day look like for somebody living that life? do they do all the processing of their flocks out on the steppes (milk, meat, fibre)? did you get to eat a lot of delicious goat? the random detail about st bernards just kind of naturalising to the steppes is great. i can see how that would make the wild dog population more intimidating. apparently they have a similar problem in the himalayas with feral tibetan mastiffs.
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Nov 12, 2022 11:07
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Thanks for the thread, every once in awhile we get a former Peace Corps volunteer make one of these threads and they're always super interesting. I've heard from several travel sources that you don't ever need to book accommodation in Mongolia. Just wander around the country and some random stranger will certainly invite you to stay the night with them, is that actually true? You'd never have to worry about being robbed or scammed? How do people view the communist era? Sounds like Russia did their own cultural revolution, but also brought lots of development and jobs to the people.
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Nov 14, 2022 02:24
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The food is what I'm most interested in, too! Food is always my favorite thing to learn about, especially treats. What is candy like there? What's considered a fun thing to eat, compared to average food?
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Nov 17, 2022 12:08
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:Mongols play a game which translates to "Five Fingers". It's essentially rock-paper-scissors but you use all five fingers, and each finger beats another one. So you go "one, two three" and throw down your hand with one of your five digits extended. Thumb beats Index, Index beats middle finger, middle beats ring, ring beats pinkie, pinkie beats thumb. Pretty basic way of deciding things, like a coin toss or whatever. Okay, I feel like I'm missing something obvious here. What happens if one person throws down an index finger and the other person throws a pinkie, for instance? Is that just a draw and you go again? Or is there some complicated tier system?
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Nov 17, 2022 18:56
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:Mongols play a game which translates to "Five Fingers". It's essentially rock-paper-scissors but you use all five fingers, and each finger beats another one. So you go "one, two three" and throw down your hand with one of your five digits extended. Thumb beats Index, Index beats middle finger, middle beats ring, ring beats pinkie, pinkie beats thumb. Pretty basic way of deciding things, like a coin toss or whatever.  Thank you for this. I met a group of Mongols in 2008 and they didn't speak English but I ate lunch with them and had a fun time pantomiming a conversation. We ended up playing this game but I couldn't understand the rules, except that after each round the winner would get to flick the loser on the forehead. I'm pretty sure they were loving with me because I ended up losing 4 or 5 games in a row and the guy I was playing against had these gigantic hands... I ended up walking out of there with a welt on my forehead.
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Nov 17, 2022 21:47
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bees everywhere posted:
Every story I hear about people who hang out with a group of Mongols makes them sound like total bros, it rules. Speaking of bros, can you tell the story about getting beat up? What it a jovial sort of beating or was it more aggressive?
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Nov 17, 2022 22:00
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Kenning posted:Every story I hear about people who hang out with a group of Mongols makes them sound like total bros, it rules. To elaborate, the Mongols that I met were actually the dudes OP was referring to here: Yorkshire Pudding posted:They sent like a dozen dudes to Iraq to help America I think. except this was at Camp Phoenix in Kabul. IIRC they were there as field artillery trainers. After lunch I ended up going back to their tent and trading some things with them like currency and uniforms and that was where we played the fingers game. The other notable thing that happened was when they seemed to be asking me "do you think I look Chinese or Japanese?" so I played along and said "all of you look like you're Japanese, except that guy, he looks more Chinese" and they started howling with laughter and pointing at the guy. And that is the story of how I first came to learn this fact: Yorkshire Pudding posted:There is a longstanding animosity between China and Mongolia, for obvious reasons, and Mongols (generally speaking) really, really don't like China.
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Nov 17, 2022 22:25
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https://twitter.com/HAMKING_/status/1592785544396046336 never forget
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Nov 17, 2022 23:41
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