Choibalsan looks like most other Soviet-built towns - lots of apartment blocks from the 1970s, all of which haven't really been renovated since they were built, so all are falling apart slowly .... But there is also the ger district, on the north side of town away from the river, where people from the countryside have moved to be next to the town, and put up their gers and built a wooden fence round them to create a yard, or "hasha".
The market, on the east side of town, is where you buy all the things the people from the countryside come in to sell - meat (of all animals, all bits) (including I'm told horses' heads with they eyeballs still in ...); "white food" - cheeses, milk, butter, curds; tools and scrap metal; fuel - firewood, scavenged coal, dried dung; apples, cranberries, pine nuts, tomatoes .... Also lots of stalls where women sell dried goods they bought wholesale - pasta, rice, biscuits etc, and beautifully arranged fruit and vegetables from China.
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