The Lemons / Broin' Out / Playtime / Taxis / Nazis / Going to Herd Some Sheep...

Ok. So. One night over a month ago, my fellow intern and I were at a restaurant and this band came on and played a few songs. And they were quite good. They played a few songs in Mongolian and a nice Coldplay cover. We took notice because the lead singer was very distinctive looking, he was kind of small, and had a beard and sunglasses and a hat, very non-Mongolian. And the bass player looked like Attila the Hun. The next day, we found out that these guys were the Lemons, the most popular band in Mongolia. So we thought that was cool. That weekend, we saw the singer at a club, and our Mongolian coworker knew him and asked him to come over and sit with us. So we hung out with him for a while. His name's Odnoo. He didn't speak too much English, but was super friendly, and still wearing his sunglasses. And it was quite dark. So I don't think he saw us at all. But from that moment on, we were bros.

We've seen more of their concerts and hung out with Odnoo a few times since then, and he's always been friendly and approachable, which is cool because this guy's like the biggest rockstar in Mongolia, and our brolationship has really blossomed. And he's always wearing his sunglasses. Apparently he never takes them off. Some say it's because he was weird looking eyes, but most say it's because he's really flipping cool. I think it's the latter. Here's my favorite one of their songs, partly because it's sweet and partly because I can understand the chorus (it means "hello, hello-o"). You can see my bro. He's the one with the sunglasses.

So this weekend was this big 2-day outdoor music festival called Playtime, kind of like the Bonnaroo of Mongolia, but with maybe a thousandth the amount of people. It's at a hotel about 25 minutes outside the city, set on the banks of a river at the foot of the mountains. It was a gorgeous day and the scenery was absolutely stunning. And people camp out there and hang out and eat khuushuur, and there's 37 bands playing between 2 days. Which must be every single band in Mongolia. I don't know where they scrape all these guys up. Some of them were terrible, but most were pretty good. And The Lemons were headlining it, and they put on the show of a lifetime. They were rocking and the whole crowd was singing along and jumping around and it was all good fun. The bands that followed them were pretty terrible, so we left and found some tea and khuushuur.

I left that night, and took the most terrifying taxi ride of my life back to the city. While the trip out took 25 minutes, we got back in a flat 10, tearing down little country roads, weaving between cars in the city, and blaring Russian techno-pop. I was hanging on for dear life the entire time. The only English my driver knew were a few choice curses he yelled when we hit a speed bump at 70 mph. And then after all that, he overcharged me. But he had a meter, so I couldn't argue. Taxi drivers here are sharks, and taxi service in general is pretty sketchy. Probably 5% of taxis here are actually marked as such, and have meters. The rest are just unmarked cars that stop and pick you up when you hold out your hand. But those might actually be better, because you can't argue with a metered fair, though they are all rigged. One taxi driver I had was actually an artist who gets in his car when it rains and drives people around to make an extra buck. So I avoid taxis whenever possible and never ride them alone because they are sketchy.

Oh, and a little while ago my coworker showed me this article from Time Magazine about neo-Nazis in Mongolia, and we were quite scared. Whenever we've walked around since then, we've wondered which establishment could be the fabled "far-right hangout." We think we have it pegged, an unassuming little place across from the Masterfoods, but we don't have the guts to see if it's "adorned with Nazi paraphernalia." But I finally ran into my first Mongolian Nazis this weekend. They were just two guys chilling at a club, but one of them had a Luftwaffe t-shirt with a big swastika on it, and another had the Parteiadler on his hat (thank you wikipedia for the word). And it was really disturbing. I wouldn't be surprised, and you can mark me on this, if Mongolia is overrun by some weird facist dictatorship in the next fifteen years. Seriously. It's brewing, even though they say Mongolia is only one of the true democracies in Asia.

And tomorrow is my last day of work! After that, I pack up and head to the countryside for 5 days to live with a family. I'll have my own ger to sleep in, which is quite luxurious. And I don't really know much else of what I'll be doing, except that the family has livestock, so I hope I'll be doing a little herding and milking and wrangling and all that jazz.

Hmmm, oh! and I met one of the best sumo wrestlers in the world today! He's Mongolian, held the title of world #1 for a number of years until he was dethroned by another, younger Mongolian. So the two best sumos in the world are Mongolian, a fact which, I hear, causes no small amount of ire among the Japanese. But the Mongolians dig it. So anyway, this giant guy was walking out of a restaurant as we were walking past, and I thought "wow, that's a big dude," but my friend was like "DUDE! That's Dagvadorj!" And I was still clueless, but he explained who he was and hyperventilated a bit and so we ran after him and we asked him for a picture. He was kind of in a hurry, but stopped and let us take our picture with him. But alas, we took it on a cellphone, and when we got back to the office, found out that it hadn't saved or something, and so the incredibly awesome picture was lost forever. He speaks very good English and is fluent in Japanese as well. And he has a very limp handshake; I suppose because he would break many many hands if it were firmer. Seriously, his hands are like the size of hubcaps.

Well, I'm off to the countryside soon, and then my time here's just about over. Hmm. Some reflections next week.