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Kuwait: Quick and Quiet

I had wrapped up my time in Mongolia and flew to the next country on this trip, which was Kuwait. You may be thinking what I was when I came up with this preposterous itinerary, which is, “Kuwait is nowhere near Ulaanbaatar.” And you would be right. After deciding to visit Mongolia, I wanted to visit another country that I had not been to before, but there wasn’t much around Mongolia, so I looked West and decided it was time to time to hit up a couple of Gulf microstates. Next stop Kuwait.

Almost every blog or social media post I see from people who have been everywhere and feel the need to rank countries, ranks Kuwait near the bottom. Boring is the consensus. No problem. I didn’t plan to spend much time there and, in my experience, everywhere is interesting for a day or two. I would be in Kuwait for about 36 hours.

I landed in the middle of the night and took a taxi to my hotel, the ibis Sharq (so called because it is in the Sharq district). Uninspired, but it was cheaper than a lot of options. I have no idea if there is a better area to stay in Kuwait City; something walkable and affordable. I feel like it does not exist, but I am open to suggestions. The ibis was fine. I slept for a few hours and headed out. I wanted to get an early start because I was there only a short time and I knew the afternoon would be hot.

I wasn’t sure what to wear in Kuwait. I heard mixed things about how covered up and conservative I should be, so erring on the side of caution, I wore a light black abaya and matching headscarf with some black beading at the hems and underneath I had leggings and a t-shirt. I don’t know that it was necessary to be so conservative, but I think I would have felt conspicuous walking around without it. But the thing was, it was very hot. It was at least 45°C and I think at one point it went up to 48. It was not pleasant for walking. Throughout the day, I kept tucking into air-conditioned establishments or sitting on the sidewalk in the shade and drinking lots of water trying to get my temperature down. It was intense.

My main stop, and I think every tourist’s main stop in Kuwait City, was the Kuwait Towers. Three retro futuristic sipe-like towers built in the 1970s. Two of them piece blue spheres. One sphere is a water tank, one is a café, and one is divided in its lower half as a water tank and its upper half is a restaurant. I did not pay the money to go inside and I don’t regret it. But they were cool to see in person. During the day they are blue and white but at night they are lit up in different colours. I was able to walk there from my hotel and took a bit of a stroll along the bay, again until the heat overtook me.

Thankfully they have Uber in Kuwait, and I called a car and asked it to take me to another area of town so I could visit a big mosque and the souk area.

A couple of problems with Kuwait: One problem is that it is a car culture. It’s not designed for walking, so the streets don’t have much life them. The distances are long and there’s not a lot of things to engage with along the way. Also, it’s hot, so walking isn’t great to begin with. The other problem was that I was there on a Saturday; a Saturday being sort of like the equivalent of a Sunday in a Christian nation and pretty much everything was closed. So a city that wasn’t super exciting to begin with felt even more quiet. The business district was a ghost town.

I did wander over to the souk and that was a little bit interesting although most of the shops were closed. Fortunately, some of the cafes were not, and I found a café (Dalalwa Café) with lots of outdoor air conditioners and men lounging outside, drinking tea and smoking shisha in crisp white thawbs (locally called dishdashahs). I joined them and drank tea and smoked a cigar. They refused to take my money. I attracted a lot of curious looks, but they were polite and no one was no one made me feel unwelcome. (I’m not sure if the looks were due to my gender, the cigar, or the face that my face was so red and sweaty.)

The mosque I wanted to visit wasn’t open. All I could do was walk around the outside. I walked around some streets and took in more of the atmosphere, such as it was. I tried to visit the museum, but it was closed, as was the aquarium. There really aren’t a lot of designated tourist attractions in Kuwait.

What Kuwait lacked in museums, it made up for in cigar lounges. I was able to visit two. Both were in commercial buildings: one, simply called No.21 high up in The No2 of the two Pearl Towers; a bit difficult to find, but worth it. (UPDATE: sine I was there it has relocated to the 4th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel Kuwait at Burj Alshaya. The other, the Cabinet Club on the second floor of Salhiya Mall. They were nice lounges. Very well appointed and with excellent selections of cigars. Not cheap. Nothing in Kuwait is.

I enjoyed the respite from the heat, and I was able to chat with the employees of the two lounges. It wasn’t easy to engage with people in Kuwait because there weren’t a lot of them around but the people working in the lounges were all from other countries and spoke English and were happy to chat for a bit. I was the only woman in the two lounges. The others there were men, again dressed in gleaming white dishdashahs with designer sunglasses and perfectly groomed facial hair. They looked very fancy. I felt bedraggled by comparison.

At some point in the day, I started to feel a bit unwell. I wasn’t sure if it was heat stroke or if it was the subtle food poisoning that I had been experiencing yesterday at the Istanbul airport, but my stomach just wasn’t right. I went back to my hotel to have a bit of a rest before dinner. Because I had some big dinner plans.

The most interesting thing about going to Kuwait was that I was having dinner with someone that I have been working with for over 10 years but had never met. If you don’t know, I’m a lawyer. In 2015 we took on a case involving members of the Kuwaiti royal family and their deceased father who had invested in some properties in British Columbia Canada. Several of the children ended up suing each other including in British Columbia and we became lawyers for one of them. (I’m able to write about this this because there are several reported decisions in the Supreme Court British Columbia, so all of this is public information.) At the time of writing, the case is ongoing. Anyway, I had never met our client, the Sheikha, and I was excited to have dinner with her and her daughter. A Sheikha is effectively the equivalent of a Princess. She and her daughter selected the restaurant and picked me up at my hotel in a black window tinted SUV. And we went to a restaurant called Dar Hamad in Salmiya, which is its own city, but really seems like part of Kuwait City.

Again, to be respectful I was wearing my abaya with my headscarf loosely draped over my shoulders. The Sheikha was also wearing a black abaya with her hair covered but the daughter was wearing a more western style outfit, although still quite modest. The restaurant we went to was gorgeous. Beautifully designed and fancy. We had a table that looked like it was meant to seat ten but it was just for us. I didn’t understand why we had such a large table until they started bringing out all the dishes. The Sheikha had ordered a feast. Not a veritable feast but an actual feast of different things for me to try. She knew ahead of time that I was a vegetarian so most of the dishes were designed to be vegetarian.

*some of the dishes i was too sick to enjoy*

This would have been heaven, except that by the time I went to the dinner I was feeling extremely unwell. I had been suffering from terrible bouts of nausea and feeling like I was going to throw up. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, but I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep anything down. I politely told them that I wasn’t feeling that well but that I was excited to try all the food. And I did have the smallest nibbles of all of the different dishes but every time I did, I felt really ill. On two occasions during the meal I urgently had to leave the table and I went to the bathroom to violently vomit. This was not the first impression that I wanted to be making, but it was a very enjoyable dinner and I felt very privileged to be able to experience it.

They drove me back to my hotel and I went to bed. I had a flight early the next morning.

Apart from my dinner with the Sheikha and the cigar lounges, I didn’t love Kuwait. It wasn’t the most interesting of places, however, I think being there on a weekend was a bad decision. For that reason I would like to go back and get a better sense of what the country has to offer. So while it’s not high on my list of countries that I’ve visited, I’m not sure I gave it a fair shot. But that was my visit and my next flight would take me to another new country of similar size, Bahrain.

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Ulaanbaatar redeems itself

On that third day in Ulaanbaatar, I woke up in a good mood. I had so enjoyed my tour the day before and, despite not loving Ulaanbaatar on my first day, I was excited to see more of it. I devised a loose walking plan through the city, with plans to meet someone for a cigar in the evening.

I walked from my hotel (the Hotel Nine by the main square) to Gandantegchinlen Monastery. It was a pleasant, if unremarkable, walk. I did make one blunder, though: I walked by but did not visit the newly constructed Chinggis Khan Museum. I felt like I had done enough of that the day before, and I didn’t think I had enough time, so I skipped it. Everyone I have talked to since has told me it was a mistake and that the museum is incredible. I should have at least popped in. Next time.

I arrived at Gandantegchinlen Monastery and discovered my favourite place in the city. It is a complex of Buddhist temples, and I’ve seen lots of Buddhist temples, but there was something about the way they were laid out and the openness of the space. There was also this low, deep chanting and the occasional soft sound of a gong that permeated the space and made it feel so serene. I felt it kind of deeply. I think it was mostly the chanting. I think, with the right music, I could be tricked into joining a cult.

From there, I walked to a café/tea house called Potala. I read about it on a blog or in a book because I would never have discovered it otherwise. It is on the 11th floor of an office tower called Gem Palace. Weird. But it is a lovely café, decorated in a Buddhist-temple style, with lots of places to sit comfortably and look at the view. They had food (including vegetarian dishes), but I wasn’t peckish. I did try one of their specialty drinks, “Potala Coffee.” which was strong coffee with shar tos (Mongolian clarified sheep or cow butter). It wasn’t terrible, but I think I’ll stick with black coffee. Great café, though. They even had Wi-Fi and lots of outlets; it would be a great place to work on a laptop.

After that, I wandered around more and made my way to a restaurant at the Corporate Hotel. There isn’t anything too special about the hotel, but it has a restaurant with a big, covered patio and comfortable seating. I had a veggie curry and a cigar (Juan Lopez No. 2) and decided it was time to try Mongolia’s vodka. I opted for the Chinggis Gold Vodka, which was the best they had on the menu. The menu said it would be just an ounce, but the waitress brought out the bottle, and I swear she poured me half a glass of vodka. Look at the photo; that’s not water. (It tasted like…vodka.)

Rested and feeling good, I walked south to the Bogd Khan Winter Palace. Bogd Khan was the leader of Mongolia from 1870 to 1924, and this was one of his residences. It was not a great walk there, but I did find this excellent Soviet-style mosaic on the way.

The palace had small, modest interiors and a little bit of a museum, but the palace itself was the real draw, with its decorations and murals.

I didn’t feel like repeating the long walk back to the centre of town, so I hopped on a bus heading in the right direction, and it got me where I wanted to go. I meandered around town for a little longer and then took a taxi to a cigar lounge to meet a stranger.

When I had posted on Facebook that I was flying to Ulaanbaatar, a cigar friend of mine from Vancouver who now lives in Hong Kong messaged me to say that his neighbour, who is also a cigar smoker, was in Ulaanbaatar for a year for work. I’ll call him Pemberton. My buddy connected us, and Pemberton and I arranged to meet at a cigar store and lounge called Habanos Cigar Lounge.

*a nice lounge in an uninspiring setting*

I greatly appreciated that there was a lounge in Ulaanbaatar, but the selection of cigars for sale was only so-so. I bought a Bolivar Belicoso Finos and a Partagas Serie D No. 4 from a disinterested salesperson and settled into the lounge. The inside was actually pretty nice, but, when Pemberton arrived, we sat outside on the patio. It was nice.

We chatted, and I got to hear what it was like to live and work in Ulaanbaatar. Dismal was my takeaway. Pemberton was from the Netherlands but had moved to Hong Kong long ago and worked for a beverage company. His posting in Ulaanbaatar was for about a year, during which he worked with the government to set up manufacturing and distribution in Mongolia. Similar to the stories I had heard from others, doing any work with the government was slow, inefficient, and a bit corrupt. Pemberton found living in Ulaanbaatar depressing and unpleasant. I can see that.

We parted ways well after dark, and I walked back to my hotel. Ulaanbaatar may not have a lot going for it, but it did feel very safe. The next morning, I got up early and took a private transfer to the airport (hoping not to take the bus this time). The sky was beautiful.

I enjoyed my three days in Mongolia, even if I was only lukewarm on Ulaanbaatar. If I were to return, though (and I wouldn’t rule it out), I would take the train to some other locations in Mongolia and try to spend more time in nature.

But I was on to my next destination from Mongolia, which was, illogically, Kuwait.

*some murals and a random Beatles monument in Ulaanbaatar*

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Ulaanbaatar to the Unknown: A Mongolian Day Trip

My first day in Mongolia, checking out Ulaanbaatar had been a mixed experience. It was not a great city, but I had a good time checking it out, even if there wasn’t much that I liked. The second day I would break things up by taking a day tour into the countryside. This would be a great improvement.

I booked a day trip with a company called Nomadic Hospitality Mongolia to see Terelj National Park and the statue/museum of Chinggis Khan. I thought it would be a private trip but there was a French girl on the tour with me, which was a nice surprise actually. When I told her I was from Vancouver she lit up and said, “I love the X-Files!” A show that was almost entirely filmed there. I am a HUGE X-Files fan, so we had a lot of chat about.

Our driver / guide as a young woman (probably only the second time I have had a female guide or driver) called Kulan who was a terrific host. She answered all of my questions about Mongolia including about how people live in the remote parts, the economy, the government, and the local music.

Glorious Genghis

We drove first to the massive silver statue of Genghis Khan. It is a new monument, built in 2008, which is a bit weird. I always thing of giant monuments as something we don’t really do anymore, but I guess I was wrong. It was cool. The scale and the glittering silver against the blue skies were impressive.

Below it is a museum about Genghis Khan and his empire. Very well done and it amazing to look at the maps and see how far they got into Europe and Asia. In case you doubt or don’t know, here is the map of the Mongol Empire at its height in 1279.

Outside the museum were various fellows with camels and predatory birds if you want ride or have the birds perch on your shoulder for pictures. I did not but couldn’t resist a camel selfie.

A Ger-iffic Lunch Spot

We visited a local family to have lunch in their ger. Obviously this is a thing they do for tourists, but it was still very cool to be in their actual home and see how cozy it is and to walk around the fields surrounding it, interacting with cattle. Lunch – or at least the veg portion of it – was simple but tasty, with my favourite part being the aaruul, dried balls or fermented milk or yogurt from cows, goats, sheep, yaks, or camels. It was similar to those I have had in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (called qurt or various similar spellings).

Terelj Temples

From there we drove to Terelj National Park to see, first of all, a large rock that looks like a turtle. It does actually look turtle-like, though for that alone I don’t think it would be worth the drive. The setting, however, was wonderful. Green and dotted with wildflowers and just so sweeping and open. We got to appreciate more of it as we walked up a long path to a Buddhist temple on the mountain. The views were incredible and the temple was serene. Or at least it was until I mistakenly walked in the wrong direction around the room, causing some woman to abandon her spiritual reverie to harshly rebuke me in a manner that I found rather un-Buddhist.

Back in the Capital

We drove back to Ulaanbaatar. It was a great day. I think that is the thing about Mongolia; what there is that is really worth seeing is in the countryside; in the landscapes, both punishing and desolate and green and serene. But it is rather difficult to get around if you don’t drive. This gave me a nice taste, and I am glad I did not skip it.

After my return I ate another meal at the vegan restaurant I had eaten at the day prior (Agnista Vegan Restaurant) and paid a visit to the National Museum, which I liked.

My third day in Mongolia would be another day in Ulaanbaatar, and I am pleased to say that it grew on me as I found more about it to like.

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First impressions of Ulaanbaatar

I arrived in Ulaanbaatar at about 9:30 in the morning flying in from Seoul on, what would turn out to be a ’round the world’ trip.

Mongolia. A new country and a new capital city. Apparently, some people will shorten Ulaanbaatar by just calling it “UB”, but I was committed to the saying the full name every time. It’s fun to say and even better to read and write. With all those long As. I was excited.

As exciting as it was to land, getting in from the airport was a bit annoying. It is far from the city. There is an airport bus to take you on the approximately 50-kilometre journey, but the traffic is so terrible that the journey can take up to two hours. It took nearly that long the morning that I arrived. It’s bizarre really, there is lots of room for roads through the countryside, but it is a narrow highway congested with too many cars. I was impatient, but I still enjoyed the journey. The scenery was beautiful with rippling hills of green but very few trees. The bus dropped us off in the main square in the city which was just a minute or two from my hotel on foot. The main square was impressive. Imposing buildings some with attractive colours and columns; a giant statue of Genghis Khan – the fellow who would be everywhere – and the weather was nice.

I walked to my hotel the Hotel Nine, which is nothing special to look at but it has an excellent location, a good buffet breakfast, and reasonable rates. The nicer hotels were mostly unremarkable and overpriced.

I went out to explore. Ulaanbaatar didn’t make a great first impression on me. I’m not sure it made it great last impression on me. At least not in terms of beauty. It is, generally speaking, an unattractive city. There are some buildings that are nice, some that look decorative, some that look a little bit Soviet, and there are some beautiful temples, but overall, it is just quite ugly. It is unattractive buildings with busy streets and neighbourhoods that were designed for cars and not walking. It’s not the sort of place that you wander around and explore and get lost in charming little nooks and crannies. But it was interesting and I enjoyed it.

I visited the National Art Gallery which had some nice works of art, but mostly it was interesting to see the very specific Mongolian paintings of nomads and camels and harsh winters on the steppe.

There was a temple area sort of in the middle of town that I wandered over to. I wasn’t able to go inside, but viewing them from the outside was and gave me hope that there would be more interesting things to see.

I walked a lot around the central part of the city that day exploring what there was to see and I wasn’t really loving it. I was having a good time, as I always am when I’m exploring somewhere new, but I wasn’t charmed or wowed or impressed by what I saw. I did visit a little cafe with some vegetarian food, and I went there and had a bite to eat and smoked a cigar. It was kind of a cool place with music playing and lots of young people with neck tattoos and army boots. I was pleased to see that there was kind of a cool alternative subculture. And in walking around the city I have to say that I think Mongolian people are underrated for their beauty. Obviously not every person is beautiful, but the people that are attractive are extremely good looking.

I wandered around some more and found myself on the patio of another restaurant where I had a negroni and a cigar and watch the sunset behind some unattractive buildings. Speaking of the negroni, a fun fact about Ulaanbaatar is that until it was repealed in 2022, on the first day of each month alcohol was not allowed to be sold or consumed. It was a law. Apparently, Mongolia has high rates of alcoholism, but the law was repealed because it just drove drinking and alcohol sales into the black market for that day.

I was tired from my journey and underwhelmed by the city and I didn’t stay out late that night. There also didn’t seem to be anything in the evening that I really wanted to do, so I had an early night. The next day I had booked a driver to take me around to see some sights outside of the city. That day would be excellent, as would my second day exploring Ulaanbaatar which I’ll write about in another post.

And this is one of the downsides of writing a dairy-style blog, The first day was mediocre, but it got a lot better from there. So if you are reading this and thinking “Ulaanbaatar sounds awful” or “Ugh, she didn’t even visit the good spots”, I get it. My next two post will be decidedly more positive. But this was my first day and impressions.

Read on for enhanced positivity. (Nature! Temples! Gers! Cows!)

Wandering North

Kuwait: Quick and Quiet

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