Big City Life

The first hurdle in getting a flight to Ulaanbaatar is the booking of the actual flight. Sure, this can be done on Skyscanner but it doesn’t actually offer you all available options, and doesn’t seem to match the actual timetable. So off I went to the Aero Mongolia office in town were you can purchase and ‘open return’ flight. I pulled out my card to pay but was met with a ‘no card’ comment from the lady behind the desk. I was ordered down to the bank where I was to pay directly into their account and return with the payment slip. At the bank my card was passed around and inspected by a few employees before one of them told me ‘no, go to ATM’. Mongolian Tughrik is a little bit like Monopoly money and I proceeded to attempt to withdraw 900 000MNT, no surprise but this was not possible in one transaction. Two transactions later I took my rather bulky purse directly back to Aero Mongolia, thinking this would cut out the middle man of the bank. In her friendly Mongolian manner she shook her head. Nice try Amy, back to the bank. Clutching my near million very tightly I arrived back at the bank at handed over the wad of cash. Finally I could return and collect our tickets.
The friendly owner of the hotel offered to drive us out to the airport in his very well looked after car, complete with TV screen. Ulaangom is not a very big place and the same lady who sold me our tickets was now working at check in. There is no board to show the time of boarding, nor is it printed on your boarding pass. We tried several times to walk towards security (purely when some other people did, and when it seemed to make sense as our flight was due to leave in about 10 minutes), but were politely told ‘not yet’. About half an hour after scheduled departure we were boarding a tiny plane. Neither of us had been on a plane in quite some time, so we’re enjoying the novelty of flying when an announcement came over that we were due to land and to store tray tables and return seats to the upright position. It turns out we were making a clearly scheduled stop that no one had told us about. We landed in Hovd and remained seated for about 15 minutes whilst passengers disembarked before being told that we too had to get off whilst the plane refuelled. Rather confusing considering we had spent that 15 minutes watching them refuel the plane. We returned to the plane along with some new passengers, and they were drunk new passengers! Preparing ourselves for a little debauchery we were most let down when they appeared to just be struggling with their apparent vodka consumption, a few of them making good use of the sick bags provided as well as frequenting the toilets numerous times before passing out, sound asleep. One guy, who was lucky to have two seats to himself, decided in his drunken stupor that he was lonely and came to sit across the aisle from us next to a poor unsuspecting, sleeping businessman. The look on the businessman’s face when he awoke to a large drunk guy looking at pictures of girls on his laptop next to him, was priceless. Close to landing time this guy started writing a note in English, it read “I am sorry. I am drunk.” We assumed this was for us and began to chuckle, but laughed even harder when he handed it to his new friend next to him, why it was in English we still can’t figure out!
Upon arrival at Chinggis Khan airport our experience traveler habits kicked in and we easily negotiated a cheap price for a taxi (Puji, our taxi driver also served as our only taxi driver during our time in UB, picking us up at basically our beck and call). Puji must be Mongolian for efficient yet crazy person. His manoeuvres in and out traffic were manic. At one intersection (very clearly a red light with a queue of traffic) he weaved in out in order to get to the right hand lane where he indicated right only to do a quick check for traffic before swerving back left to continue driving straight ahead.
Being that our flight was goodness knows how many hours late, we dropped our bags off and ventured out for food. Desperate for something other than fatty goat meat we found Broadyway Pizza, a total beacon for Western tourists but we didn’t care! One large Hawaiian pizza, Caesar salad and a serving of fries later we were two very satisfied people!
Sunday morning came and we ventured out in search of real coffee (sounding like deprived westerners aren’t we??) and it tasted like liquid gold. We spent the day perusing shops with Hayden purchasing a pair of thermal camo overalls from the ‘70% off’ sale bin in the Sate Department Store, being larger than your average Mongolian male has its advantages! We also stumbled upon the changing of the guard out the front of the parliament building, and it was way better than anything you’ve seen at Buckingham Palace.
Come Monday and the start of the working week we were ready to attack Mongolian immigration in order to extend our visas. This was a process that I had put aside half a day to complete, but it ended up being a 30 minute experience of fill this form out, hand in your passport and cover letter (that I hand written on blank paper from a Disney princess notepad purchased in Ulaangom and used miniature nail scissors to trim off the picture of the Disney princesses) pay over there, hand your pay slip, wait there, here you are, have a nice day.
Mongolian efficiency reared its beautiful head again that afternoon when we received a call from DHL saying that our parcel had been delivered and was ready for collection, approximately 65 hours after it had been collected from Coventry (gotta love the old tracking feature). After collecting our parts we decided to try our luck and arrange a return flight for Tuesday in order to get this whole ‘driving across the world’ show back on the road. Our luck had run out, no flights available for Tuesday, no flights at all on Wednesday, so Thursday it is. Not bad really and after a productive day we treated ourselves to a drink in the Sky Lounge (on the 23rd floor of the Blue Sky Tower) and took in the chaos of the Ulaanbaatar roads from above.
The next few days saw us indulge in too much food and a little bit of culture. The National Museum of Mongolian History was worth the small entry fee, and took us right through from the epic era of Chinggis Khan to present day democratic Mongolia. My most impressive fact was that Mongolia has an incredibly high literacy rate, just above 97%, which isn’t as high as the UK, USA or New Zealand, but it is higher than Australia! We explored the Choijin Lama Temple, a Buddhist Monastery smack bang in the middle of the city and stopped off at Millie’s Cafe to sample some of their famous chocolate cake that clearly is too famous as they had sold out. We were told to come before lunch if we want chocolate cake, but were satisfied with a large slice of carrot cake instead.
On Thursday morning Puji delivered us safely to the airport, goodness knows how as he ran far too many red lights for my liking. Our flight, once again, was delayed but this time by the arrival of the Japanese Prime Minister and his entourage – the guy had not one, but two planes, and if we craned our necks at the right angle out the window of the terminal we could see him step out and give a wave! Fortunately, the flight back to Ulaangom was an all sober affair by all passengers and we were lucky to receive a free ride into town from the local mechanic (who had been on our flight). We were greeted at our hotel like old family, given our old room back and began to prepare ourselves for gearbox repairs…eeek!