Monday, June 23, 2008

Meat Market

Today we went to a meat market.  I hate to say I forgot the camera, because there just aren't words enough to describe everything.  Thankfully it was s cool, rainy day, because when you walk up to the meat market there are probably 15 trucks piled up with animal carcasses just sitting out in the open.  SO we walk in this building, a large room about the size of a small school cafeteria.  There are tables all around the edges and up the middle, every table is piled up with pieces of meat.  There are signs hanging overhead with the different types of meat listed: Cow, Horse, Sheep, and Camel.  You just walk around the different tables and the people just call out wanting you to look at their meat, the lift it up, turn it over, trying to prove to you that their meat is better than the person standing right next to them.  Each person is selling their own meat, so there are probably 50 different vendors in this one room.  We bought meat, and one woman cut the meat for us and after handling raw meat, with no gloves, proceeded to eat an apple, no hand washing here.  Yuk.  I will take the camera next time.  The funniest thing is to see whole sheep carcasses hanging from hooks against the wall and they have this huge fat tail which is a real delicassy to the Mongolians.  
   From there we just needed some things from a regular grocery store, but even after trying 5 different stores all over town, we never did find canned tomatoes.  Another day, this is normal.

2 comments:

Sumya said...

Interesting to read how a foreigner sees us. Enjoy your stay here.

dawn wilson said...

YUCK!!! I think I might be a vegetarian if I had to see the whole animal! Then again, that didn't sound very easy to find... I might be a bit skinnier than I am right now! I am so glad you are doing this site! I am going to looove reading it and keeping up with you.

Does anyone else think that the name of the person above is impossible to pronounce! I bet they would get quite a laugh out of hearing me try!

PS to get to my site... just ckick on my blue name at the top of this comment. Love ya!