Ulaanbaatar

We arrived in Ulaanbaatar to be greeted by our guide Toya and her friend Mirror, who was training to be a guide. They took us to a bank to get our money exchanged. You can not get money out in Ulaanbaatar without a VISA card. so lucky I had read ahead in my LP and brought enough Chinese yuan with me cos I don't have a visa card.

After that we went to our hotel. I was really looking forward to a nice hot shower but was very disappointed when I turned on the taps. Mongolia has centre hot water for every suburb. Unfortunately our suburbs hot water was under repairs for the next ý days so I had to have a cold shower. And cold in an understatement. In the words of Jenny," You get an ice cream headache from just washing your hair". It felt like the water had come straight from the north pole! and I could not stand under the shower for any long period of time with out going numb.

After our showers we headed out for lunch and then a look around the town. We had lunch at Nomad cafe which was some of the best food I have eaten this trip. After getting sick of Chinese food it was great to have a veggie soup and real bread. In china you can only get sweet bread.

We went for a walk to the main square and saw the statue of the man himself: Genghis Khan or Chinggis according to the Mongolians.

The main city square in Ulaanbaatar

Genghis Khan looking likt the giant man he was

One of the first things you notice in Ulaanbaatar other than the city looking like a war zone, is that all the signs are written in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. Our guide Toya told us that the Mongolian language was originally written in sand script but with the introduction of Communism in1924 and the influence from Russia the language was written in Cyrillic. The Mongolian language is a Turkic and sounds very different from Chinese.
Ulaanbaatar looking like a war zone

Ulaanbaatar looking like a war zone
The mixmash of buildings that you find in Ulaanbaatar

The Mongolian people are much larger and healthier looking than the average Chinese person, as their diet consists of meat and dairy. While on the train to Mongolia a local girl told us not to eat any of the vegetable because they come from China and the Chinese poison them. I am not sure if the Chinese really try to poison them but a lack of knowledge about food handling might lead to them making you ill.

Any back to our the tour of Ulaanbaatar. In the main square there is a statue of Damdin Sukhbaatar, who in 1911 with the help of the Soviet Red Army declared Mongolia independent of China.

Sukhbaatar and an old Soviet truck

After look around the square we made our way to a place for dinner which served all you can eat stir fries. I was still full from lunch so could not take fun advantage of the situation. I did notice that Mongolia was a lot more expensive than China.

After dinner we went out for a few drinks at the "tiger beer" beer garden which had live music and felt very westernized. The walk home after drinks was a bit intense. We were followed the whole way by street kids asking for money. It felt a bit like Phenom Penh, Cambodia with this uneasy feeling. The side walk had massive holes in it everywhere and the streets were not well light. I felt like I was going to fall into one of the holes and never be able to get out.

The gang at the beer garden

I had a chat to Toya, our guide about it and she said the city was now very unsafe at night. She had to take a taxi home after dropping us off and said there was a chance she would get robbed. didn't like the idea that everyone was at risk of being robbed.

That night Jenny and I went to bed while the others went out for a few more drinks. Daniel couldn't sleep so went out again at 2am. He tried to get into the club across the road but the door was lock. He was then approached by a large Mongolian man who told Dan to give him lots of money and he would take him to some prostitutes. Daniel kindly declined and ran back to the hotel.