Rumor Mill

By Rachel

Thankfully my annoying stomach ailment moved on in time for me to have my own Tsaagan Sar experience. Today, the third day of Tsaagan Sar, I went to the home of the oldest person who works at MEA. Silly me asked if they take turns hosting the work people each year, but oh no, they always go to Naraa’s house because she is the oldest. This is how it works. Older people host, younger people visit, even if you are only 6 days younger.

There was the pile of meat, the buutz, many salads and even a basket of apples and baby oranges. The drink of choice was vermouth, in the classic Martini & Rossi bottle. They all thought they were drinking martinis, but that’s okay.

The worst part was the milk-tea. Calling it tea is not exactly fair because it is really hot diluted, powdered milk. I can deal with that. It is not exactly tasty, but it is drinkable. What made me want to retch, however, was when a nice big hunk of butter was plopped into my cup. It melted, forming that lovely melted butter oil-slick look. I tried, but I just could not drink it. 1,000 buutz would be a treat in comparison.

The highlight was the news. Naraa had met the day before with someone who works for MIAT. They passed on the news that the Ulaanbaatar airport’s name was going to be changed to Chenggis Khan Airport. She also learned that the name of Ulaanbaatar was going to change to, you guessed it, Chenggis Khan City. I had heard rumblings of these ideas about a month ago.

What I had not heard before was the reason this was happening. It seems that “we” have spies in Inner Mongolia, China. They reported that Hoh Hot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, was planning to make those very changes in order to confuse the tourists coming to Mongolia this summer for the 800th anniversary of the Mongolian nation. So, Mongolia beat Inner Mongolia to the punch, and re-gained the upper hand in their epic battle.

In fact, the name of the airport has actually been changed. The status of Ulaanbaatar is unclear. We’ll keep you posted.