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It had been an exhausting two and a half days as my 3 day trip to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia neared its end. Sitting at the dining room table with my friends, Uuna and Oona, talking about how I had enjoyed my trip thus far. Little did I know that two very weird things were about to happen. The first thing being my introduction to Airag, or Kumis depending on where you are. The second is the first tattoo idea, decision, and experience.
“What even is Airag?”
My Introduction to Airag
As we were sitting and talking about how much I had enjoyed the previous two days in the lovely capital of Mongolia, I was kind of blindsided when offered an alcoholic beverage. At first, I chalked it up to the incredible hospitality of my friends as they were decently older than me. Since I had met them back in the states, when I was twelve years old, we had never actually really had something to drink together.
Oona, a smaller lady of about 5 foot 4 with short black hair that bobbed just over her shoulders and deeply knowing brown eyes. She had the slightest Mongolian roundness to her cheeks that just made her the most adorable thing hiding a smile that could melt your heart. If I remember correctly, she dismissed herself from drinking as she didn’t have a taste for what her husband was about to offer me and I believe at the time she was still breastfeeding their new baby.
Uuna was a taller gentleman, about 5 foot 11 with short, not quite buzzed, black hair and a chin patch. He grabbed what appeared to be a juice jug off the patio. I noticed that it was without a label and filled with a half-frozen white liquid. After pouring me a glass, they both watched me intently to see how I reacted to the sour, curdled liquid that was filling my mouth. The taste of this drink was just straight putrid. One of the worst things I had ever tasted. It sent my stomach into somersaults and curled my toes.
As with everything else during this trip; they only told me what it was after I tried it. It tastes almost exactly how it sounds: Fermented Mare’s Milk. Absolutely revolting, but I finished the glass so as not to be impolite. That was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Truth be told though, I would have to try it again to truly get my mind wrapped around what I was trying. Perhaps it’s like how people explain century eggs; the first time you puke the second time you like it. After the taste test, the conversation slowly started dimming when I had a brilliant idea. Let’s get a tattoo to commemorate being here.
Inkception
“I want to get a tattoo?”
It came out as a question at first. I wasn’t sure if it was something I really wanted or if it was just some crazy impulse coming out of nowhere. My first tattoo I had thought about for a few years, but my second was an impulse to celebrate when I received my visa for China. Needless to say, neither was unheard of.
“You want a tattoo?” replied one of my friends.
“Yeah, I want a tattoo….. And I want it to be culturally significant and relevant to Mongolia.” I responded in kind. Little did I know that idea would start a whole thing that would go complete snowball effect and turn into this whole project.
That wording is what set everyone in motion. Turns out Oona had a friend….who had a friend who either was a tattoo artist or knew a tattoo artist. Not sketchy at all, I know, but I was on top of this at this point. There was no going back.
We spent the next couple of hours pouring over different symbols and classic Mongolian things including the Endless knot (ölzij-ulzii), bracelets of Khan (Khan-buguivch), and the Earrings of the Queen (khatan-suikh) before settling on the Soyombo Symbol. It is a symbol that resides on the country’s flag and a word in Ancient Mongolian that, according to my friends, means Mongol.
Starting from the Top: The fire represents eternal growth, revival and renewal, with the three prongs signifying yesterday, today and tomorrow. It sits atop the Sun and Moon, which is more commonly read to symbolize the universe (but it is also interpreted as the origin of the Mongolian people, or that the Mongolians will live forever, depending on what you read). Under this is are symbols taken to be arrows.
Their meaning is a willingness to defend their values, or to vanquish their enemies. Between the arrows on the Mongolia flag is a ying-yang symbol (ancient Chinese symbol depicting the complementary dualities of light and dark, man and woman, old and young, etc.). Some say it is a symbol of two fish (the fish meaning vigilance as they never close their eyes) but given the Soyombo was created by a Buddhist with strong links to China I think the yin-yang is far more likely. Surrounding this are two vertical rectangles, which are typically taken to represent stone walls of a fortress, symbolizing strength and unity.
From https://www.mongolia-travel-advice.com/mongolia-flag.html
The next thing I know the tattoo price is set and the appointment made. The artist was also established as my ride to the airport after. Not long after packing my stuff, I drifted off to sleep.
The Day of the Tattoo
Early that Monday morning on October 30th, 2017 there was a whirlwind of activity as my friends got ready for work. Oona’s mother came for a visit before they were all to send me off. That lovely woman brought me a teardrop-shaped quartz stone, that I wear to this day, for good luck. She also brought a small piece of fake paper money. It is a simple laminated item that is symbolically supposed to bring prosperity in funds into your life. That still stays in my wallet at all times.
After all the goodbyes had been said I grabbed my bag and Uuna and I headed down to get on the bus. Ulaanbaatar has this really interesting system in which depending on the last number of the license plate of your vehicle determines what days of the week you are allowed to drive in the city. If I remember correctly, this is done to reduce pollution in the city. We took the bus down to the middle of the city which was bustling in the early morning chill. After about 20 minutes we arrived at this old, red office building that looked like parts of it were starting to erode away to nothing. We entered through doors that looked as if they would fall off their tracks.
The ground floor was filled with a bunch of stores; some were open, some weren’t, and others yet were completely empty. As we moved up to the second floor, I started getting more uncomfortable. I looked around to see torn, dirty carpets and walls scuffed up with ink-black smears in random spots. Walking down the halls, which are eerily silent given the time of day, the unease worsened. It was so unlike everything I had experienced up to that point in Mongolia where most things were well kept and fairly beautiful. I was alarmingly blindsided.
We finally arrived at the correct room, it was probably about 150 square feet or about 14 square metres. The floor was covered with a dirty dark blue carpet that was fraying every few feet. There were 2 faux wood desks near a large plate glass window. A large mechanical machine lay against one wall that had a pitch-black ink-like stain behind the machine. On the desk, there was a small machine in which tattoo needles were boiling beside a laptop. That was where a short gentleman was working on the design for the tattoo.
Uuna stayed as long as he was able to before he had to go to work so he could translate. Together we made sure the tattoo artist sent out his associate to get new, fresh needles to tattoo with. Also, to make the initial changes to the design I was about to have inscribed onto my body. Before too long Uuna headed out to work and I was left alone with a man I was not able to communicate with at all and was about to be tattooed by. He printed the picture off, had me hold it and used a pen to draw it on my arm. At this point, all the red flags and alarms were going off, but it was too late. I was committed. This guy was my ride to the airport.
The artist set up his equipment as his associate brought him a single thick lining tattoo needle. I cringed, fully knowing it was about to hurt. He set up the machine, one of the older ones that do not turn on and off, but instead constantly goes. He also grabbed a dry paper towel to wipe the tattoo, with no water or gloves in sight. I was swearing at myself for going down this path. The second the needle hit my arm for the first time I knew I was in for a painful experience.
This guy had the heaviest hand I had ever experienced in a tattoo artist to this day. He slowly went over the same areas, again and again, using that single thick lining needle as he outlined and then filled the tattoo. The needle bit into my skin over and over until my skin felt as if it were on fire. I felt the warm blood and ink mixture start trickling down my arm. The pain was tied with the panic of the time left to get to the airport running out as I checked my phone every few minutes. This made for a very unpleasant experience of an activity I normally absolutely love. This was not my normal tattoo therapy.
The Trip to the Airport
Eventually, a final dry paper towel was scrapped across my wounds and the tattoo. Bringing out liquid for the first time, he washed it quickly before packing up. I asked if he had something to wrap the finished product. He didn’t. So I took a clean, white shirt from my suitcase and used it to wrap my arm. I then paid him money equivalent to $50 CAD (roughly 32€ or $38 USD as per today’s exchange rate). From there he assisted me in taking my bag downstairs and putting it in the trunk of his black sedan. We hopped into the car and started driving.
It wasn’t long after we started driving that I saw the buildings start to change from the cleaner, nice, square buildings, that I had gotten used to seeing, to buildings that were run down, dirty and looked abandoned or condemned. I immediately pulled out my phone to check my maps app. We were headed in the exact opposite direction of the airport. At this point I’m full-on panicking and trying to talk to the guy via a translation app. I wasn’t worried at this point about missing my flight, I was worried about missing some vital organs or something.
“No wonder the tattoo was only fifty dollars,” I thought to myself as he stopped in front of a really run-down white house that looked as if it were window- and door-less. He got out of the car and entered a fence that looked like it had been torn down and then rebuilt using pallets and other random wooden artifacts strewn together in a mismatched patch-worked pattern. I got out of the car after about 5 to 10 minutes and started pacing. Completely freaking out at this point. I stood on a cinder block to peer over the fence to see him coming out. We started a rapid conversation through frantic pantomime. I essentially understood he needed 5 to 10 more minutes to get a jacket.
A jacket. We had stopped in sketchy town for a f*cking jacket. Fifteen minutes later he finally came back, changed his jacket, jumped back into the car and we sped off. We arrived at the airport about 30-45 minutes before my airplane was to leave. I thanked him for the ride, grabbed my bag and ran into the airport, which was shockingly small. Based on how tired I was flying in, I had assumed the airport was much larger; but you could probably walk from one end to the other in less than 8 minutes if you wanted to.
I quickly got my ticket and lined up at security, which with how small the airport was would normally take 5- 10 minutes max to get through on a busy day. I got pulled aside when almost through security because of the lump in my sleeve from the shirt wrapped around my tattoo. A quick groping by an airport security agent and a fast torso strip later I was waved through security with 20 minutes until boarding. After a quick perusal of the gift shops, picking up an interesting item or two, and a quick cigarette in the smoking room, I got on my plane back to China. Where I stayed until Christmas.
Do you have any crazy tattoo stories?
