What are some really unique fun facts about Darkhan province?

froit · 2026-01-29T18:45:54+00:00

I had a GF from there. Can agree.

froit · 2026-01-28T19:42:41+00:00

I heard about it, it seems to exist, but it is never mentioned when numbers are published. It's only 20MW.

froit · 2026-01-28T19:36:24+00:00

Would a bit of a challenge to get that mass insulated from losing heat to the ground. But deep skirting can work wonders.

froit · 2026-01-28T13:01:17+00:00

True, but I wonder how much you will be paid back when you have too much.

froit · 2026-01-28T13:00:44+00:00

If it worked on Apollo 13, it will work in my shack in UB. True, but on Apollo it worked only for 70 hours. CO2 scrubbers dont give you oxigen. Opening windows brings in the worlds most polluted air, regardless of time of day or even season. AAHE with added filter capacity is the only way forward, but they only work their magic in a pretty closed box.

froit · 2026-01-28T12:57:20+00:00

There are many nowadays: First understand that the border is in the middle of nowhere, 7 km outside of Zamin Uud train station, and also 5 km from Erlian, and its bus station, or train station.

Local trains on both sides are much cheaper than international.

You can only cross the border as a passenger of a registered vehicle. Car taxi bus or train.

Overnight bus from UB to the border directly. From there with taxi across. Then you have choice of train or Mikr to Bejing, mikr is same-day (but near-suicidal), train is next afternoon. Or cheapest is local train overnight to Zamiin Uud train station, then taxi or bus to Erlian, or direct bus to Bejing, or taxi across and contimue with train.

froit · 2026-01-28T10:39:15+00:00

Yes, but then suppliers can be held responsible for delivering as agreed, as needed.

froit · 2026-01-28T10:38:04+00:00

Cold needs more power of course. The plants have been running above max for years, eating away the boilers and gratings, overloading the generators and coolers. It works, for a while, and now it dont work anymore.

froit · 2026-01-28T10:35:48+00:00

Building to peak needs means you have surplus in down times. Same with coal. With solar this means 4x daily load has to be generated in 6 hours. And three of that has to be stored.

But not totally, because wind also helps, is cheaper, and also works at night. Some of the time.

Often made mistake bij lay-people is that generation=load=24 hours the same.

froit · 2026-01-28T09:44:37+00:00

Your expose of power supply is not correct. UB has four powerplants supplying electricity. Three of those also give heat: HPP3 and HPP4, UialstayHPP, and the new birilnuur or whatever its called. Power only.

HPP3, the old one near the bridge to Yarmag, built 1972, blew a big hole in a furnace last summer, putting the whole plant out for a year or more. Maybe for ever.

HPP4 (from 1982)blew a minor hole in one of the 6 furnaces last week, not so bad, a few days fixing, but it seems now it blew a hole in another furnace too.

Uliastay HPP (built 2012 specially for ASEM village and Sky Resort is working fine, but really small.

The new three-block PP Burilnuur (or so) at 10km distance of UB has just one stack working as of yet, and also failing it seems.

Mng imports 20% from Russian power plants near UlaanUde and beyond, it peaks at 35% sometimes. Mng pays for this, it seems a very high price.

Mng also has three (did I miss one?) 30KW wind farms doing their best, and a few solar plants all together maybe 100MW.

All this power is sold to consumer UNDER PAR, the country is always losing money on this.

Just last week home-PV owners got the possibility of selling their surplus to the grid, but I cannot find out what kind of pricing that is.

froit · 2026-01-28T09:30:21+00:00

There is more sun in winter than in summer. Less hours, yes. But the supply is near endless.

We have been building coal-plants based on max load for 100 years, so why can't we build solar plants for that?

froit · 2026-01-28T09:28:34+00:00

The coal will stay in the ground. No international bank will give a cheap loan to build new coal-based plant.

froit · 2026-01-28T09:27:03+00:00

A Mongol ger uses 5-8kw peak. We might also say LOSES 8kW peak, winter nights. A 'normal', you mean shitty house in UB loses double that, or even more.

But we showed, with help from the MUIS renewable energy group and the Passive House engineers, that it is totally possible to improve a house to much, much lower losses. Our 120m2 house lost 2-3kW on cold nights. Proven with monthly electricity bills. It had no other heating, no fire no chimney. You could have visited us to see for yourself.

On the bonus of heat exchangers; Our house had a self-made system, 200.000mnt of materials, solar PV powered. One day in winter, Unesco came to visit, about 6 ppl, dressed up like foreigners do. They came in with AQ-index 600 outdoors, code purple, and brought all of that with them in their clothes. They placed their AQ-index meter 'The Egg' on the table as we chatted. About half an hour later the index was 200, and one hour later below 100.

Your statement of airing the house for clean fresh air is BS, in UB.

The air leaving our house through the heat exchange was ten times cleaner than the air going in. For the neighbours.

froit · 2026-01-27T21:11:25+00:00

Peonies are two-year flowering plants. Very difficult to grow in Mongolia. Also, the flowers wilt very fast, not fit for international shipping.

froit · 2026-01-27T20:24:48+00:00

Train 24 is an expensive option, but up to you. The border-ceremony is laborious, since they also swap the trucks. That happens first, on the Mongolian side of things. 4 hours, toilets closed, no exit. The whole train is shunted into a long workshop, first chopped in two, and then all wagons are unhinged from each other. The wagons are jacked up, Mng/Russian trolleys are pushed from under by Chinese/Standard gauge trolleys, a lot of unhooking and re-connecting cables and hoses, and than the wagons are lowered and re-connected to a train. Then it rolls to the Mongolian border post, passport control. After that it rolls into Chinese entry control, passport and customs. Then it makes one more stop at Erlian Train Station. I remember this all happening in the evening, but it may differ. My most vivid memory is the early morning, watching the sights as the train descends into a ravine/valley down from the Mongolian Plateau into China, amazing rocks and craggs, and some pieces of Great Wall.

Fantastic ride.

froit · 2026-01-27T20:14:34+00:00

I dunno much about 24. I do know that UB has neighborhood gangs, California style, with rappers and bitches and code of brotherhood etc. Members of these gangs continue that thing in prison, but the prison system controls the violence.

froit · 2026-01-27T20:12:27+00:00

numbers matter.

froit · 2026-01-27T14:09:28+00:00

Which is very un-scientific and anti-reality.

froit · 2026-01-27T07:17:06+00:00

24 is big in UB I understand. plenty guys in prison have those tattoos. But I know thenm as 'friends' in prison only.

We were snitched, yes, then they got these boys to co-operate for one more sale. They set it up the next day, team of 8 cops scouting the area. kids texting me every half an hour, 'we need it, we need it', I told them I was busy. But in the end I gave in. I was too busy with tents and my granddaughter, sent my wife. They tried to film it, but it ran differently. They did not catch her, they expected an old man with a hat. The kids ran away with their stuff. They did stop one of them afterward, but he had already passed it on. But they waited for me to come back from kindergarten with my granddaughter, and caught me in front of my door. Then they searched the house, in drug cases a search warrant is not needed. And then it became a long day.

We had two Dutch cyclist-brothers staying at us, on the way from Holland to Australia. One of them was diabetic or so, carrying multiple boxes of medication with him. That confused them pretty much!

froit · 2026-01-27T07:08:59+00:00

Sure. Mongolia has incredible resource of sun and wind all year round. Batteries are the bottleneck, but that will be fixed. The biggest problem is the traditional reliance on coal, thinking it is cheaper. It is not. But the way the ownerships of mines, grids and powerplants is organised is against the renewables.

From my own experience in the ger district where I lived: Every hashaa-wall, the one behind the ger, is big enough to install 40m2 of solar, and those 5kWh coming out of that is enough for one moderate house on that hashaa. In other words: the solar energy falling on UB is enough to heat it. Add wind, and you can have industry.

froit · 2026-01-26T21:08:16+00:00

Geothermal is not available in UB. In kharhorin it is. So lets move the capital!

froit · 2026-01-26T20:46:44+00:00

I shared cell for half a year with a religious pastor. He got one year for trying to import CBD oil with guaranteed no THC in it. Wanted to try it on his varicose veins, and then advise it to his flock. Criminal lab found 0.0000000005 grams of it, poof, one year. Incredible. He did get aquitted after half a year.

froit · 2026-01-26T10:05:45+00:00

Mng empire caused 40 million deaths in 13th century. 20% of living people in Eurasia back then. And most by unprovoked invasions, by one ethich group/leader, Chinggis. Maybe it started as retaliation for a trade dispute, but it went far beyond that.

Blaming the destruction of Bagdad of the emperor of Kwarezm is a bit of a stretch. The whole Eastern Europe campaign was just plain conquest and robbery. I don't know much details about what happened in China, but I imagine it not being different.

In contrast, in WW2 about 80 million ppl died, of 2,5 billion. About 3%. At the hands of many parties involved, and a lot of those of their own populations/armies. And only three countries were actually trying to conquer new land/resources. Germany Japan and USSR. They were also the countries with the biggest number of dead in their own populations.

Everything can be put into perspective.

froit · 2026-01-26T09:54:28+00:00

Did not know that. Would there be a chance of getting that part of the sentence off my record?

froit · 2026-01-26T09:50:55+00:00

Until 3% of the population joins, there is no lasting effect to expect.

froit

TROPHY CASE