Summer in the city: Ulan Baator

Mongolia is not a hardship post, at least at this time of year. The huge state department store Nomin has five floors of everything from 81" flat screen TVs and stainless steel pizza pans to potted marginata plants and Clinique cosmetics. Plus of course cashmere: a quarter of the second level selling floor overflows with Mongolian cashmere and camel hair from 10 different local companies. Sweaters, hats, gloves, socks, leggings, dresses, coats, even woven cashmere blankets and camel hair throws. The quality is luscious, the styling fashionable and the prices reasonable to ridiculous.

You can go to a bustling pub and watch the European football tournament on one of those 81" flatscreen TVs while sipping a stein of Chinggis beer and gorging on a hamburger with fries. The meat is Mongolian grass fed. You can also go to a fancier restaurant for red wine and braised lamb shanks in cognac pumpkin sauce for $17. You can eat real cheesecake, Uzbek pilaf, French onion soup. The taxi system is a bit bizarre but it works. There are officially marked metered taxis roaming the streets or you can call for one, but mostly people just go to the curb and flag down passing cars. The rule of thumb is that small, old cars will taxi you for about $1.80, 2,000 tukrit, which helps the driver pay for gas. The other rule of thumb is not to flag down the humungous SUVS that dominate the streets, especially if you are a single woman. You will be taken for a ride and not paying in tukrit.

Last week I went to a dinner party at the apartment of an American working here. It was palatial to say the least. The duplex had two living rooms, a huge kitchen with all the latest appliances, a 15' square astroturf covered patio/deck and three extra large bedrooms. The master bath was as big as the front room of the STupa Cafe and had a whirlpool tub, huge glass enclosed marble stall shower, the Korean version of Toto toilets and double sinks with enough room left to exercise in if you chose to. It came with garage parking.

The city has a handful of museums including a costume collection and the lovely Zenabazar Art Museum, dedicated to a Mongolian lama who propogated a particular style. It has gorgeous applique thangkhas, a local specialty. It has an opera house and theater. Karaoke bars are such the rage, there's one on every other block in between all the clothing and handbag stores. The Mongolians are literate: the city has universities and bookstores. wi-fi is ubiquitous and just about everyone is talking on a cellphone as they scurry down the sidewalk or sit in their car honking at the stalled traffic.

Speaking of traffic, there are lights and delineated pedestrian crossings. Some lights even tell you in bright green how many seconds you have to get across the intersection. But that's no guarantee. Drivers here hate to stop for pedestrians; they hate to stop for traffic lights or anything actually. It's like they're horsemen galloping on the plain; they want to keep going. But there is a fine now for hitting a pedestrian. This is easy to do because most pedestrians wander into the streets like the cows of India, crossing where and when they please, even while traffic is flowing fast on a green light. I've watched them stand bewildered in the middle of the road while the light is green wondering why the whizzing traffic doesn't stop for them. I've even had several people encourage me to step off the curb with them while the light was green. It's bizarre but I've gotten used to it.

Two Saturdays ago I got the extraordinary experience of the Gobi Spa. The entry fee is 20,000 tukrit, which is about $17, and when you pay you are handed your own blue sweat suit and two keys. One is for a locker at the entry where you have to store your shoes. The other is for the women's locker room where you put all your clothes and that blue sweat suit. Then you get the choice of showers with all the shampoos, conditioners, soaps and body lotions supplied; the sauna for which you have to sit on a plastic bag to be sanitary, the cool and hot tub, or the tables where three gorgeous young Mongolian women in bikinis will give you a body scrub that will take your skin off. The fierceness of their scrubbing made me think this place was a Russian holdover.

Once you've sweated, showered and been scrubbed, you put on a pair of plastic panties and your blue sweat suit--the pants are bermuda shorts length. Now you have the choice of a relaxation room where you can recline on mats and watch TV or sleep or sip your soda from the bar; a private massage, a restaurant, a dark relaxation room with mats covering the entire floor or three special saunas. One is the salt room, one the agate room and one is made of another mineral with quite different properties. The floor of these rooms is lined with mats you can recline on, using or not as a pillow the wooden blocks scattered around.

We went on what happened to be Mother's Day and the place was packed. The locker room was a riot of mother's brushing the black hair of their small daughters or shepherding them into the sauna. A few little girls were having a screaming good time in the shallow cold pool but stopped to notice me, the only yellow haired female in the place.

Perhaps that's why the squat Mongolian man in the agate sauna room noticed me too. I wasn't reclining. I was sitting with my back against the hot wall, one of those wooden blocks under my knees, trying to release tight muscles in my lower back. I was in there with my new friend Amanda who was guiding me. The man, who was the only other person in there, started talking to her. Because Amanda is strikingly gorgeous with high cheek-bones, full lips and large almond eyes, I thought he was flirting. But then I saw them pointing to me. The man put his hand in the air, moving it down to indicate the disks of the spine. "He's saying you should go to the traditional hospital for massage that will cure your back," Amanda explained. "He's very professional; he can see your problem." The man pointed to his lower back and then at me. "I know where the place is. I think you should go."

And two days ago I did. I was the only person not bearing an xray and also the only nonMongolian paying the $12 for a 45 minute treatment. It was bone cracking chiropractic so I got out of there in a hurry. But back treatment is available along with cashmere, cheesecake, cabs and karaoke in Ulan Baator.

~Sandy Garson"Wordsmthing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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