Bayangol Hotel Ulan Bator

I'll fill this in later but just updating where I am and where I've been...

Day 92. Trip to Saynshand from Beijing 15/7/08 Photos 20+ The 'Monkey' group met at 6.45am, I was the last to join 15mins late. No excuses, I was only staying over the road. At 7.45am the official start to the Trans-Siberian pulled away from Beijing platform #2. I was sharing a 4 bed cabin with 2 other 'Monkeys' on the same tour to Moscow, Arnold & Chinhan. As we escaped further away from Beijing we got more & more blue sky. Mountains, tunnels & stony basins. We were heading in a Westerly dir...

Arrived in UB off the train from Irkusk. Its a pretty random city with ger tents mixed in beside normal houses to run down shacks to posh hotels its crazy. Lots of nice pubs we found a really nice Irish bar next to our hotel to chill out in that served nice food and stuff. Didnt spend much time here, there's not much to see mind you except wander in and out shops and cafes and pubs on peace avenue.

Arrival into the capital of Mongolia was very early in the morning after the all day and night journey from Ulan Ude. It wouldn't have been anywhere near as long had it not been for the border crossing between Russia and Mongolia. The Russian side took all of seven hours of a total of nine. First thing after arriving and freshening up was a tour of the city and a visit to the Gandan Monastery. Buddism has well and truly arrived now. We got a great view over the sprawling mass of UB from the w...

After our 5 days in the countryside with the nomads we had just one day to explore the Mongolian capital - Ulaanbator.

Approximately half the population of the country live in Ulaanbator so it's is an incredibly crowded city - both on the pavements and on the roads. There are just two main roads through the city, and no traffic rules apply so over taking, undertaking and even bumping up on the pavement can be expected... we decided to limit the number of times we'd cross these roads!<...

The 4* hotel was yet another welcome luxury. We checked in around midday, washed our clothes in the sink and hung them in the room to dry and then headed straight out with Steve, Sarah. UB, like Urkutsk, didn't really impress either of us. The monastery was interesting but we didn't pay to enter the Budhist temple (we've seen sooo many Budhist temples!). There was a wedding there between a Mongolian girl and a European-looking guy. The State Department Store was big but we just stocked up on ...

IMH: We spent one night in Ulaanbaatar, in a lovely 4 star hotel, before departing for Russia. In hindsight, it would have been more fun spending another night at the Ger Camp where you feel in touch with the Mongolian countryside as opposed to in the dreary Ulaanbaatar which resembles something out of the communist era. We probably did not spent enough time in the city to truly appreciate it, but superficially, it looks liker a very poor city, with a few sites of interest - such as a monaste...