Narantuul market, or the black market, history goes back to the Soviet era, and is absolutely massive.
The market is largely un-regulated and is known for hosting a lot of counterfeit goods, but also lots and lots of other stuff. Here you will get everything from washers to tshorts, saddles, jewelry and suitcases. Also there is tons and tons of clothes, cloth and shoes….so so so many shoes.
We really did not have anything in particular we where looking for. But we wanted to check out the local boots (not very comfy, so that was a pass), Maren was buing a local dress (deek) and Trond really needed new sneakers. After the great wall walk i China, the sneakers had picked up a distinct smell that scared off dogs and made kids cry.. also, the hotellroom got infected, triggering lsd-type dreams and curled up curtains.
The market is really huge, and we got lost after 5 minutes – its impossible to keep an idea of direction. The stalls are divided into zones, show zone, clothes zone and so on. Its really not a lot of knick back and endless stalls of the same stuff,tgmhere is a lot to explore.
I went and checked out saddles and other horse equipment. I cant really bring a saddle back home, but when checking prices it would probably be a nice investment.
We ended up walking around here for 4-5 hours, alleays seeing something new. The market is a sight in itself – even if you are not buying anything, its cool just to walk around and look at stuff.
Getting there
The market was to far for walking, or – not to far really, it would just take forever getting there. So instead of grabbing a taxi we decided to try the bus.
Mongolia is a big country, but there are just 3,2 million people, where 1.2 lives in ulanbator and surrounding area – thats where there are busses…not really anywhere else. There are no trams, and no metro.Its really a scooter/car country.
we had a couple of misses to start, had a couple of times where the bus took a different way that we thought. Its a bit hard due to both the letters – that are more like cyrillic…but also due to the fact that nothing really ever is on time…sometimes the bus will not show at all.
That one will take you to and from the market.. best of luck! 🙂
Getting a bus card is also kifmda hard, there are just a few spots that sell them, and they are hard to find. So we ended up with just paying cash. Its a 1000 mnt for a ride – wherever you wanna go, and you put the EXACT amount in a box when you enter… You dont get a ticket or anything.
The bus at least took us where we wanted to go, it was just a 3 min walk from the bus stop. You just have to follow Google maps or the flow of people, there is not really anything letting you know that this is the way to the market.
the market is the blue roof, and surrounding area..absolutely massive!
Going back we took a taxi.. or, there really are not any taxies here – but there are a lot of people stopping and asking if you need a taxi, so it was not an official setup. There is supposed to be an app you can use with random drivers that works as a taxameter.. we just agreed on a price… 20k from market to Novotel, they asked for 30k, alleays haggle 🙂