Managing Mongolia

I'm in China writing about Mongolia, hopefully I'll get caught up today...I can't read the blog (I think it might be trying to translate it into Chinese!) so if anyone put any responses, thanks heaps, hopefully I'll get to read them in Hong Kong tomorrow sometime.
Day X - Ulaan Baatar Recover from train in UB's poshest hotel, stroll the streets smiling at everyone cos they smile back, eat mutton dumplings, provide background noise for Mongolian National TV, and do the washing.
UB is a very small capital city and a very cold one, there is not much green around but the buildings are varied and many are brightly painted, the Mongolians love colour, especially on the children...to match their rosy cheeks (something to do with the cold I think). WE saw purple buildings, green buildings red buildings and lots of marble inbetween, not a great idea walking on marble steps when it gets icy.
We spread our stuff around the hotel room and sent the big stuff off the the laundry. Our room looks into town, and over the Mongolian Olympic offical building (apparently they're big at shooting...more about that later). We walked into town to the main square (Suhkbataar)over the bridge, about 15 minutes to get to the centre. The wind is freezing and the non goretex bits soon get a bit cold so we speed up. Everyone is a lot more smiley than Russia, and there is a real entreprenurial spirit to doing things, though a lot of things seems to be held together with string and good luck. People stand on street corners with wireless push button phones so others can dial home (for a fee)...we kept looking for the wire to see if they had just taken the phone out of the house. Traffic is of the 'more you hoot, the better you drive' variety and you take your life in your hands when you step out on the road. We fall back on our usual trick of 'drafting' the locals...hoping that the red jackets are seen as a warning, not a target.
Lots of older people still wear native dress, and in winter this consists of heavy padded coat with silk outer and a yellow/gold/orange sash tied low on the waist, and heavy leather boots with the toes pointing up. All quite sensible and warm. Everyone else favours the black leather or woolen coat look, and big hairy hats with dangling animals bits (tails or testicles usually) are almost as popular here as in Russia. Pointy highheeled boots again feature for the fasionable lady.
We look around the square and set off the find the english book store as I've almost run out. We end up in the old state store, now private, and stock up on a couple of christmas gifts (don't worry Mands, wouldn't dream of buying you a Christmas pressie from Mongolia), postcards and a old (about 30 years) appliqued hanging from inside a ger. M refuses to let me buy the one with authentic water stain(or maybe it's yoghurt) so I settle for the faded look. Those of you that visit, look out for it appearing in a Weaver room someday soon. We go down a floor and buy a lovely cashmere blanket at a price we keep pinching ourselves over and finally set off for lunch. Very unsuccessful at finding the reccomended resturant (if anyone can tell us where Be Pou is - we're still looking) we end up in something called 'Silk Road', surprisingly good and they start filming some business discussion at the table next to us. We end up having to slurp our coffee and remove ourselves and our crackly plastic bags very quietly, the waiter delighting in the comedy value of this...but hey - it's not often you can say you've almost been on Mongolian National TV.
We waddle home...freezing wind spuring us on...tears on the eyelashes freezing, and me trying to work out how to blow my nose without taking my gloves off!
Do some laundry and make use of the extensive radiator (just like being in England again) then catch up on BBC World, write some postcards. Tomorrow we're off the the ger!