As I have mentioned a few times before, this summer marks the 70th anniversary of Bayan-Olgii's province-hood and there is nothing that Mongolians and Kazakhs love more than a good reason to celebrate. This time the anniversary celebration was lumped into the annual Naadam festivities, a holiday celebrated all around Mongolia in honor of the "three manly sports" of horse-racing, wrestling, and archery. All these celebrations took place in Olgii last week.
I'll talk more about Naadam and the anniversary festivities in another post, but now I want to show you some pictures of Olgii's face lift.
This is Olgii's main square. The central monument was repainted a new red star was placed on top of it.
The building behind the monument is the post office. The red lettering along of the roof says "Bayan-Olgii 70."
This is Olgii's new sports stadium. Unfortunately it wasn't finished in time for Naadam.
This is one of the many banks in town. It was just painted this green color a week ago, but the paint is already chipping off.
A new hotel in town that promises a restaurant and a pub. It looks good from the outside, but the inside is not yet completed.
This is the new eagle statue in front of the theater that all the locals are proud of. Everyone in town hangs around it all day taking pictures. There's even a fountain in front of it that was turned on for day, but I haven't seen it working since.
Two other hotels in town upped the ante by displaying new signs.
Even our apartment building got a fresh coat of mud-brown paint.
*Now if you are reading this and you are worried that all these changes are causing Olgii to lose it's small-town charm, it's ok. People are still cruising around like this:
and this is still prominently displayed on the monument in the square.
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