Mongolia 1999-2000

The Mongolian Weekly Cyber, November 1999- January 2000

Introduction

At age 24, after my year of master studies in York, England, I spent part of the winter of 1999-2000 with my parents in Ulan Bator (Ulaan Baatar in the local way of saying it), capital of Mongolia, my father being the Turkish Ambassador there from 1998 to 2002. This journal chronicles two months in the heart of the winter of this enigmatic, ‘deep Asian’ country, based on a spontaneously evolving series of weekly e-mail messages to friends from York and other places, for the purpose of keeping in touch.
Mongolia was much more an unknown element, one of the few ‘last frontiers’ left in the world of travel back then. Now, thirteen years on, I imagine it is much better known and celebrated. Here in this journal, I endeavoured to present a window into diplomatic/ expatriate community life in a truly foreign land. I look back at my own writing of younger days with some amusement and embarrassment (!) (and confess to editing some ‘creases’ in the original text to improve the narrative flow), but I still find it worth sharing, with the hope that it will entertain and inspire you to discover more of that beautiful Land of Blue Skies, and lastly, to ponder the fast-changing times evidenced in the contrasts to some of our modes of living and thinking today, in 2013.

Mongolian Rhapsody Date: November 21, 1999
Mongolian Weekly News no. 2 Date: November 28, 1999
Mongolian Weekly News no. 3 Date: December 5, 1999
Mongolian Weekly News no. 4 (aka the Mongolian Weekly Cyber) Date: December 12-13, 1999
Mongolian Weekly Cyber no. 5 Date: December 19, 1999
Mongolian Weekly Cyber no. 6 Date: December 26, 1999
Mongolian Weekly Cyber no. 7- New Year Edition Date: January 2, 2000
Mongolian Weekly Cyber no. 8- The Final Episode! Date: January 10, 2000