Ulaanbaatar is a city of divisions: between locals and expats, locals and repats, repats and expats, rich locals and poor locals, countryside locals and city locals, and on and on. The expat community likewise breaks down into a few tightly enforced groups. There are the mining types (on and off site), the UN/NGO types who have been here forever, young American and Australian do-gooders from the Peace Corps or AYAD, expats-by-love, the exiles and degenerates that I've written about previously, random European adventurers, diplomats, and the Chinese and North Koreans that are in Mongolia for work who are rarely seen in town.
These communities distrust, hate and often don't even know one another. As someone who doesn't slide into any of these categories very easily, I've been part of many a conversation where NGOs/mining companies are slagged by the other side, even though the slagger knows no one personally from their imagined foe. There's an aura of distrust via ignorance that permeates UB on all sides.
With spring though comes the type of person that all can agree to hate: the tourist. After not gracing UB for months due to the deep chill of winter, they start to bob up and about in early March. Suddenly, the city feels much more crowded. You might find them taking up tables at Millie's or Rosewood during lunch that you had a right to after planting your bum in those chairs at -45C for months. They could be strolling in front of you, oblivious to the rhythms and protocol of the Mongolian street. Or they might just be having drinks at an Irish bar, looking hopefully at the wait staff for service that, this being Mongolia, may never come.
You can spot them a mile away. Clad invariably in what you might call "safari gear" (white or light coloured button up shirts, completely new hiking boots and, of course, a freaking safari vest) despite being in the middle of a postindustrial city, they walk around the streets aimlessly grasping their expensive camera, often wandering straight into the vicinity of pickpockets and thieves. They move in large numbers in suspiciously new clothes as if they had all gone to some "adventuring" shop in whatever country they came from and chose the "Mongolia special."
There are of course tribes, to get old school anthropology on you, within the tourist community. The major categories here are the backpacker, the professional backpacker, the Eurotrash adventurer and the Aussie bogan tourist (not many but they find their way up here). We hate all of them, and, in this hate, we find an ultra rare feeling of what we might call a communion of life in UB: that we (all expats, locals, repats, whatever) share the experience of living and surviving in Mongolia in the medium to long term. There is a palpable sense that in order to enjoy Mongolia in the spring and summer then you must endure its winter, and skipping the difficult part is a galling defiance of that communion. Plus, they are, for the most part, fucking annoying.
