Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar: Blue Skies At Last

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After spending quite a bit of time in China, we were ready for a change of scene. What better way was there for us to achieve this than by visiting Mongolia? We had previously booked a 5-day tour in Mongolia that started in Ulaanbaatar. To get to Mongolia's capital city from Beijing, we experienced a very memorable train journey that we enjoyed quite a bit.

The journey by train took 30 hours; the time actually went by very quickly. We left the main Beijing rail station at 7:40am and arrived in Ulaanbaatar the following day at 1:20pm. During the long journey, we were amazed as the scenery changed from the rugged, mountainous terrain of China's Inner Mongolia province to the expansive, barren and dry terrain of Mongolia, where the world-famous Gobi Desert is located.

The rail tickets that Selena Travel provided us with were hard-sleeper seats, but on an international train, this meant that there were only four beds in a cabin, instead of six. We shared our 4-berth cabin with two Mongolian students who were studying Chinese at a university in Beijing. The cabin and beds were pretty comfortable, but there was no air-conditioning and it became hot and stuffy during the latter part of the journey, especially when we had to close the window in our cabin to prevent a lot of dust flying inside the window when we crossed the Gobi Desert.

During the trip, we played a lot of card games; we even taught the students and a group of their friends, who were also Mongolians and travelling home from university on the same train, how to play Kings in the Corner. The game was a hit and it helped us pass several hours of the day. We also spent a few hours playing a new card game we learned called "S***head". Dan had played this game as a child but couldn't remember all of the rules; he had wanted to teach Kyle the game for several months and was relieved when a Dutch man that we had met in Beijing, and who was also travelling to Mongolia, knew all of the rules.

Besides playing cards, Dan spent a lot of time during the journey reading his book "The Stand" by Stephen King; Kyle found it difficult to read on the train, so he wandered up and down the train, checking out the different carriages. We also spent time working on our travel journal and eating food in the dining car. During one of our meals, we shared a table with a couple of old Australian women from Perth, who were quite funny with some of the things they said as they drank more and more beers with us.

To confirm the tour that we had booked with Selena Travel, we spent a lot of time working with them to get the itinerary just right and to ensure that we covered as many activities in the short period of time that we would spend in Mongolia; we also had a nightmare trying to pay for the thing when we were travelling in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, earlier this year. There was an issue when we had finally booked and confirmed our tour, when the Chinese government decided to change the international rail schedules (as they tend to do whenever they feel like it); this threw things way out of balance and was stressful for us to sort out.

Once we had sorted out the change to our travel plans, we had gotten confused as to which outbound travel date we were supposed to have, and this caused a big mixup when we picked up our rail tickets in Beijing from Selena Travel's partner agency there. You can find out more about this in our Beijing journal, which has been posted just before this one.

We finally arrived in Ulaanbaatar and were hot, dusty and tired. It was very nice to have been picked up at the rail station by our English-speaking (somewhat) guide Chaagii and our driver Rentsen. They took us to LG Guesthouse, where we ended up staying in Ulaanbaatar during our time there. The place was very nice with a restaurant and karaoke rooms on the ground floor, and guest rooms on the floors above. The woman running the guesthouse was super friendly and spoke excellent English, albeit with what sounded like a Russian accent. We saw a lot of Soviet influence in Mongolia, with the language, food, style of buildings and even hairstyles and the way people dressed. It was much different from the rest of Asia that we have visited this year since our travels started on 3 January and we were not disappointed with our week there.

One of the first things that Chaagii explained to us was our itinerary over the next several days. First, we had a city tour planned that began at the National Museum of Mongolian History. The museum was great and had many excellent exhibits with English descriptions; we immediately noticed that Mongolian museums were much different from the Chinese museums we have been to over the past 5-1/2 weeks, since most of the Chinese exhibits we have seen either displayed poor or no English descriptions whatsoever.

The National Museum of Mongolian History was established in 1924 and, not surprisingly, it housed the world's largest and most important collection of over 50,000 Mongolian historical, ethnographical and cultural artifacts. We knicked (that means "stole" for the Americans reading this) that phrase from the brochure we were handed when we entered the museum. It's quite a good one, huh?

Chaagii was a great guide and we wanted to include some of the interesting facts that we learned during our tour of the museum. We saw some exhibits that displayed pictures of square burials from the Bronze Age; there are 500 in the world and 60% of them are in Mongolia. Also, 550 of the 700 deer stones in the world are located in Mongolia; deer stones are carved stone poles that look similar to totem poles but have ancient words or pictures carved into them, instead of faces that you may see on totem poles. Deer stones date back to the Bronze Age and Iron Age periods.

There were many exhibits and items on display that proved the existence of people in Mongolia for many thousands of years. Animals have been around even longer and there is much evidence of dinosaur existence in the large country. Speaking of animals, the museum explained that Mongolian camels are different from other camel species in the world - they have two steep humps and are very large.

During the Manchu Dynasty period, the people of Mongolia were very unhappy due to the amount of torture inflicted upon them from the country's rulers at that time. We learned about the famous leader of the Red Party (not related to the Communist Party) named Sukhbaatar, who brought the Mongolian people up from their terrible times during the Manchu Dynasty. The Mongolian capital, "Ulaanbaatar", was actually named after the "Red Hero", Sukhbaatar. Much later than this, in 1990, Mongolia became a democracy.

An interesting trivia fact, that may help one of us win a quiz show one day, is that the capital of Mongolia has moved geographical locations 30 times, more than any other country's capital; the current location in Ulaanbaatar was established in 1778. As you would expect with so many geographical moves, the name of Mongolia's capital city has also undergone more changes than any other country's capital city. The last interesting thing of note that we learned was that Mongolians spell the name of their most famous ruler as "Chinggis Khan", whereas the English language has adapted the name to "Genghis Khan".

After we left the museum, Rentsen drove us to Sukhbaatar Square, a large pedestrian square with a statue of Sukhbaatar atop his horse and many beautiful buildings surrounding it, including Chinggis Khan's Building, the Mongolian Cultural Centre and the Mongolian Dance and Drama Theatre. From the square, we could see the mountains that surround and protect Ulaanbaatar during the extremely cold and windy winter months, and the sky was the brilliant clear blue that we had longed for over the past several weeks. Having visited so many large cities in China as well as locations near large Chinese factories (EVERYTHING is "Made in China" these days), it meant that the majority of our time in China was met with cloudy, grey or polluted skies.

Next was a visit to an extremely tall Buddha statue that represented Shagjamouni, the Buddha of learning. There was a large bell next to the statue and we rammed a large piece of wood into its side to ring it for good luck. After that, we were grabbed by a small beggar boy who was probably 12 years old but looked about 30; he was begging for water and money. First, he shook our hands with his disgustingly dirty ones, and then he gave us both bear hugs that you would normally receive from a long-lost relative that you have not seen in years. We were worried in case the boy-man had wandering hands, so we kept a close grip on our valuables. Finally, we had to push him off of us so we could get going to the next sight.

On a hill next to the Shagjamouni statue, we saw the Zaisan Memorial which was built by the Russians but is where Mongolians pay tribute to those Russian soldiers who helped Mongolian soldiers during the war against the evil Manchu Dynasty between the years 1918-1921, then again in World War II when they helped the Mongolians fight the Japanese. Once we climbed up several steps to the top, Chaagii realised that her watch was 20 minutes slow and we started climbing briskly back down the hill to head towards our next activity, which was viewing a Mongolian cultural and folk performance. We were late and Rentsen yelled at Chaagii in Mongolian when we made it to the bottom of the hill. He sped off, like he usually did throughout our entire tour, to the Cotton Club.

The Cotton Club was actually a strip club that hosts the traditional folk concert every evening at 6pm, before Mongolian girls get their kit off later in the evening. We missed the first few acts of the concert, but after watching the latter acts in the performance, we decided that we may not have missed much as many of the songs sounded similar to each other. There were also dance routines and an excellent contortionist performance with three young girls around the age of 11 who would give any gymnast a run for their money.

Dinner after the show was at a famous restaurant in Ulaanbaatar called "Modern Nomads". This was our first dining experience in Mongolia and it marked the first of many delicious meals during our time there. For our starters, we shared a mash soup with mutton and a diced beef and vegetable salad that was mayonnaise based. For our main courses, we were a little adventurous and tried horse steak, which was delicious and some of the best meat either of us had ever eaten. We also shared an assorted Mongolian sampler platter that included a mixture of traditional dishes such as fried and steamed mutton and vegetable dumplings, some really delicious pickled carrots and small fried mutton balls.

If you haven't figured it out, Mongolians eat a lot of sheep (mutton) but cows, yaks, horses and goats are also main sources of nutrition for them. There are not many vegetarians since vegetables are hard to grow due to the terrain and climate. We were given very large meals on our tour and definitely got our money's worth. By the time that dessert was served at Modern Nomads, we couldn't finish it, despite it being very good. We hoped that some of the staff at the restaurant were able to finish off the large pieces of chocolate cake and apple pie that we left on the table.

We were tired from the train journey and from not getting adequate sleep in our dusty, hot cabin, so sleep came quickly for both of us that first evening. Before we knew it, we had to wake up for the next day's activities, which began with a visit to the beautiful area around Gandantegchenling Monastery, which we will refer to from now on as Gandan Monastery in order to save us some time typing.

Inside the main temple at Gandan Monastery, we were astonished to see a 26.5 metre tall statue of Janraisig, the female Bodhisattva of Compassion. We hadn't bought a Mongolia travel guide because we wanted to leave everything to our Selena Travel guide so that we could sit back and relax in our last week in Asia. Therefore, the large statue, which was built in 1911 and restored on the much later date of 1996 after being destroyed by the Communists in 1938, was a nice surprise to see on our second day in Ulaanbaatar.

For the next hour, we walked around Gandan Monastery and visited many different temples and datsans. Datsans were institutes within the monastery and were where Buddhist monks study various subjects such as medicine and philosophy. It was really good to see many monks and young novices around the monastery since, in 1938, the Communists killed all of the monks that were not forced to join the army or put in prison.

After we left Gandan Monastery, Ulaanbaatar would have to wait for us until later in the week, when we finished our countryside tour of the surrounding area outside the capital city. We were really excited about visiting Terelj National Park, Gun Galuut Nature Reserve and Hustai National Park. During the next few days, we would be getting the opportunity to stay in ger camps and also with a nomadic family, to learn their way of life. Add in horseback riding, camel riding and spotting endangered animal species and we were in for a great time.

The day we arrived back in Ulaanbaatar from our tour in the countryside, it was Dan's 30th birthday. To celebrate the important milestone, we went for dinner with Chaagii at a restaurant called Khan Brau, but first we had to clean up from our dirty couple of days on the steppe (when you read our next Mongolia journal entries, this will make more sense). When Chaagii met us at LG Guesthouse before dinner, she gave Dan a large chocolate birthday cake and a couple of Mongolian souvenirs as a gift; it was very considerate of her and it showed how much we all enjoyed each other's company during our tour (our driver Rentsen also gave Dan a small gift). We didn't actually get to eat any of the cake that day because we had a large dinner, but we ended up having some for breakfast and for lunch the next day, and we also shared it with the staff at the guesthouse since there was a lot of it to go around.

For our last full day in Ulaanbaatar, we decided to spend the day relaxing and working on the travel journal (and, of course, eating Dan's 30th birthday cake). We headed just south of Sukhbaatar Square to a place called City Cafe, which had free internet access. We thought we would grab something to eat there but the food didn't seem that good (mostly Chinese and Taiwanese dishes - can you say "burnout"?) so we just had a couple of milk teas before heading off to find a new location that also had free wireless internet.

Chinggis Khan Irish Pub seemed quite a fitting place to visit. Chaagii had brought us there first for Dan's birthday dinner the previous night, but the place was full and we ended up switching to Khan Brau. The pub was an excellent place for us to sit and eat - some dodgy pub food that made us feel right at home - and have some drinks while working on the travel journal. It seemed to be the hot place in town for people to be seen in; everyone was dressed very smartly even though it was only a Monday night. It appeared as though all of the Mongolians in the place had quite a bit of money, so it could have been one of the hippest places in town.

Writing was an easy chore that day and we didn't leave the pub until 11:30pm. Trying to get a taxi when we left late that evening wasn't very straightforward and the first one we hailed tried to charge an absolutely ridiculous sum of money to go a few blocks away (after bargaining, he dropped the initial price to 3000 Tugrik, which was about £1.30, or $2). We had only paid 600 Tugrik to get to the area earlier that day, so the driver that night was trying to charge us 5 times more than what the price should be.

Expats who frequented the area probably didn't have any issues with prices that high, but we backpackers definitely did! Since taxis in Ulaanbaatar were no more than people driving their cars around looking for passengers to pick up, we were happy when a group of tipsy Mongolian women, who had left the pub at the same time as us, saw our plight. They offered to help us flag down a reasonably priced taxi before hailing one of their own, which we thought was very kind of them, especially since it was really cold and windy outside.

On the day we were scheduled to leave Mongolia, we had a few hours to kill after waking up, before we were picked up by Rentsen and Chaagii to go to the airport. We walked around the area outside LG Guesthouse and bought some toiletries and things we had run out of for the trip. We stocked up on tissues because both of us had colds still lingering around and the flight would not help our sinus issues. When the time finally came to leave LG, we grabbed our backpacks and enjoyed our last half an hour with our guide and driver before bidding them adieu and going into the airport. Before boarding our flight, we had some more time to waste, so we sat down at a little cafe and ate a couple of corndogs (each) while waiting for our flight.