2023.02.17-18. When swimming takes you to the best Chinese restaurant

Or the story of two busy but great days.

2023.02.17 – Swimming takes you places

Had a class this morning, then sorted the books that had been donated a few days ago to the department. Most of them are sci-fi novels or magazines, there are quite a few of language course books (Esperanto, Spanish, Russian, English, German) and dictionaries, and some random books. I’ll try to gift as many as possible to my students – I remember how happy I used to be every time I got my hands on some Swedish books back when I was at uni, since they are a rare find in Hungary. I hope they’ll appreciate it as well.

This huge stack is all old sci-fi novels in Hungarian.

Coming home for lunch (we ordered salads and a miso soup, really good stuff, from a new place), we chilled some with the hubby, cuddling, then I went to ShangriLa for a swim. It was really good, it’s still such a nice pool, and the view is amazing. When I am doing kicks with a board (so my head is out of the water) I can just enjoy the view of the snowy mountains through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

So the view is great but every evening makes you go blind (if you swim front crawl).

As I climbed out of the pool after my swim, gathering my stuff, a guy stopped swimming as well to get out and come talk to me. He’s Korean and he told me he’d seen me swimming on Wednesday too. He asked if I was a professional (told him I used to be, kinda) and if I swim every day (haha, as if, I swim twice, maybe three times a week at best), and complimented my technique – the usual. He was very friendly, and we had a nice chat (just small talk) and he asked if I wanted to hang out with him sometime. He’s only here on a business trip from Korea but he comes here every few months so he said we could meet up – together with my husband, ofc. What surprised me about this meeting is that it didn’t immediately surprise me.

I’ve noticed that swimmers (or is it the same for all kinds of sports? Are all athletes this open and friendly? Probably not) are very nice and extroverted. They keep talking to me at the pool – and not only here in Mongolia, where I am a foreigner and exotic and interesting just bc of that, but also back in Hungary. Whenever I go to the pool, if it’s not with my team, only by my lonesome, people tend to start a conversation with me. It usually starts out by them complimenting my swimming or just asking if I am/used to be a competitive swimmer. Then we make small talk. And whenever they recognize me from before, they seem very happy and always greet me, ask me how I am, etc. Back at home there was a guy I actually bumped into quite often for a few months and we always grinned at each other and had a few nice chats between sets. And (in the same pool) a lady who kept talking to me about her family every time she saw me. I genuinely enjoy these encounters – people like connecting, getting to know others, and complimenting them. I never started any of these conversations, at least as far as I can remember. And they’ve been happening for over 10 years at this point, since I go swimming on my own and not only to team practices. Today’s experience was just another of these nice encounters.

And it’s so cool, in my opinion, that solely because I swim, I get to meet new people and get pulled into events and groups. Back at home, I have my amazing swim team bc the ‘coach’ there is a girl (woman? Girl? Lady? I’d say girl but she is 36) I used to swim together with. And now I am a part of her team and it’s so many cool people and competitions and all. Then I come to Mongolia, and in no time, get asked to join the local swim team. Where I meet even more people (most of the Mongolians I know are from the team) and learn a few new words (my Mongolian vocabulary is about 10 words, out of which 4 is related to swimming) and get to experience Mongolia like I’d never be able to otherwise (like going to their Masters Championships and seeing a famous Mongolian rapper perform from about 2 meters). Or just like today, a Korean guy trying to befriend me. And all of these things find me because I swim. That’s the only thing I have to do – go and have a swim (which is one of the best things in itself as well, I love swimming). And they’ll all just come and talk to me, invite me, befriend me. Amazing.

2023.02.18. – Swim, shopping, Sean

Had such a great day. In the morning, I went to the REMAX swim practice, as usual. It was pretty hard to get myself out of bed, there weren’t many people (and only one person who spoke English and could translate for me, one of the young guys), and I was still a bit tired from yesterday’s swim so I could feel my muscles protesting BUT it was still a nice practice. Once again, the others fawned over my fly technique and one of the women (whose kids are also on the team, at least unofficially, and whose oldest is the one who speaks English) kept watching me swim and asking me for advice, with her son translating for us. She’s actually pretty good, I think, and when I learned that she had only started swimming a few years ago and learned to swim fly last week, I was super impressed. Her rhythm is great, and I gave her a few pointers for technique as well. They were all very grateful for that; and the woman told me I was her new idol and that she could watch for hours how effortlessly I swim. Also, I got some money from REMAX for the medals I’d won for the team at the competition – apparently, everyone who got medals earned some money, me included. I was not expecting it at all, so it was a really nice surprise, even though it’s not a huge amount of money.

After practice, I came home, made a quick lunch, and had about an hour to chill. Then, I made the asynchronous worksheets for my students for next week on Google Forms (this way, they can click through the sections in the order I intended them, and write some short answers to show they’ve actually done them) – on Monday and Friday, we are supposed to have online classes, but I suspect many of them won’t have good enough internet connection or they’ll have dozens of family members around, so I think it makes more sense for them to have material to interact with on their own time in peace, instead of having an online class at a pre-set time when half of them can’t even come and the other half won’t hear me over the noise around them. I sent out the emails with the links and deadlines, then we got ready for our evening program.

First, we walked to Ulaanbaatar Department Store (which is very close to State Department Store, only a bit further away) because a Hungarian girl living here told us they sell Hungarian wine and champagne there, and she advised as to get these as gifts for the families we’re going to visit next week for Tsagaan Sar (our Mongolian guide Uka invited us over to her family). So we went there – the weather was pretty nice, if a bit windy, only -12 degrees outside – and walked around a bit to check the place out. It’s pretty much like State Department Store only seems a bit fancier than that. Then we went downstairs to try and find those Hungarian ‘souvenirs’ – it took us some time, but we managed to find two bottles of Hungarian wine. We bought those and some pralines to give the families as gifts (accompanied by the little envelopes I’d bought yesterday).

They actually changed the date from 2022 to 2023 at the top of State Department Store!

Ulaanbaatar Department Store with its fancy golden escalators

All IKEA stores are like this here - small and very much unlike any IKEA in Europe.
(One day we might even venture inside.)

Then we walked back to the Loving Hut near State Department Store, stopping on the way to buy some pine nuts from a lady on the street. I’ve been meaning to buy some for months now, but I haven’t really had the chance. Now my husband can try it too (I’ve tried them back in November after a swim practice when the team was sharing a batch in the hot tub).

Pine nuts!

Do you remember the Korean guy from ShangriLa pool from yesterday? Well, last night we’d agreed that we would go out for dinner together today, and we’d picked Loving Hut. So we arrived there a bit early, sat down to wait for him (and decided on what to order) but when he arrived (a few minutes early, so definitely not Mongolian-style) the waitress came and told us (with the help of Google Translate and her very broken English) that the kitchen is already closed. We found it a bit weird because they’d just served some food to another table a few minutes prior to that, but I guess we’d just arrived only a bit late. Well, according to Google, they should have been open until 8 and we were there before 6:30, but we just shrugged and stood up to leave. She told us the Foody in ShangriLa should still be open, so we decided to walk there (since the Korean guy stays at ShangriLa anyway), talking on the way. Once we got to Foody, they told us their kitchen was also closed by then. Sad news, as we don’t know any other vegan-friendly restaurants around there and we were also getting pretty hungry.

Luckily, the Korean guy (Sean) recommended two restaurants that are located in ShangriLa Hotel and were both open. One of them serves Mongolian food, the other Chinese, and he recommended the Chinese one, Hutong. We checked their menu online to see if they had any vegan options (which they did) so we went there with him. What a great decision! The food was pricey (although Sean ended up paying for it, I think he had a discount or something bc he's on a business trip staying at the hotel or something) but amazing. We’ve tried many dishes – it was a sharing-kinda-situation where they put the bowls and plates in the middle of the table and you serve yourself some of it, never been to such a place before, but we’ve heard that it’s a popular solution in Asia. We’ve had spinach, Szechuan style fried veggies, tofu, rice, an awesome appetizer of tomatoes, and a wonderful fruit platter for dessert. All of it tasted amazing, really. Also, the company was excellent – Sean is really nice, open, friendly, super polite, and his English is really good, more than enough for friendly conversation, even if sometimes we had to ask him to repeat himself, probably bc we aren’t really used to Asian pronunciation in English. We’ve had a great conversation over dinner and only left the restaurant bc we were full, sleepy, and bc it was closing – we were the last patrons to leave, actually. Sean walked us to the hotel reception and we agreed that we would meet up the next time he comes to Mongolia (he’s leaving for Korea tomorrow) and that if we end up visiting Seoul, we’ll let him know.

This was our first time actually going out (other than to eat out, just the two of us, or go shopping, and the one time we took the embassy intern out for Indian food) since we moved to Mongolia. Back at home, we do have a social life, if not too vibrant and significant, but here, none at all. It was so nice to meet someone, talk to them, get to know them, just enjoy their company – and eat great food. When we arrived home (we took a taxi as it was getting really cold outside and we were tired, it was past 10 pm), we were both basically giddy with excitement, pumped from the whole experience. Clearly, we’ve missed socialising, even though we love just staying in and cuddling and relaxing. Sometimes it’s nice to connect with people and experience new things. We should do this more often. I am so happy I said yes yesterday and that I actually followed through. And that my husband was game. And that Sean asked me to hang out in the first place.

As you can see, it was a busy day (swimming, cooking, getting some work done, shopping, restaurant-hunting, dining out) but an exceptionally good one too.