Got to bed at 02:30 up at 08:00 and Penny at 10:30 just a lazy day. The hotel did not do breakfast this morning. Early afternoon we just walked through town to see if any food places were opened as we were told everything would be closed. Found a couple of coffee shops and Burger King open so we had a burger and surprisingly Penny enjoyed her meal. Got talking to 2 young woman from the US who were on a 2 year assignment here in Mongolia with the USA Peace Corp, 1 teaching English and the other Public Health. They were interesting to talk too and we wished them well. Quite warm today -17C it will be back in the 30’s at night time. Last night taking video clips of the celebrations my fingers were frozen and hurting, back in the hotel I had to run them under cold water and slowly increase the temperature to stop the pain.
Being NY Day there were bugger all traffic in town and WOW less pollution and the significant smog haze we have become accustom too was not that prevalent. Just makes you wonder what health issues the locals succumb too with this major issue of pollution? Smoking among men is high and open ash trays are dotted around if not the butts are discarded on the foot path or street. Spitting is quite common and you can see where the men gob on the foot paths, as there are these frozen gobs every where, the equivalent to chewing gum on UK foot paths.
English has become the 2nd foreign language here in Mongolia over taking Russian. The street signs are in Mongolian and English all land marks are again in both languages. The quality of their roads and footpaths is not brilliant I wonder if the extreme temperatures has anything to do with it, but they both need to be addressed.
Since Penny and I commenced our travels together back in 2017, she has been taking photos of VW Beetle cars, started off in Mexico where there is a lot of them in all states of repair. We only photoed one in Perm in Russia missed one in Moscow to Penny’s annoyance. Here in Mongolia there have been none spotted by us until we were walking back through Parliament Square and I spotted one and it has made Penny very happy. (kids electric VW Beetle car). Wonder if we see them in China?
Maurice's Travel 