How Far Did We Walk Today?

Ok, I won't keep you in suspense, we walked 14.63 km as measured by my pedometre! It's amazing, because I don't think we were ever more than 1 or 2 k from the hostel!

Ulaan Baator looks like a rough town! Imagine a place where no maintenance work has been done on roads, buildings or landscaping for twenty years and you are getting close. Once past the rough look, though, it’s quite an interesting place to spend a day. We visited the temple, which was closed for most of the Soviet dominated years. It seems quite busy now, we saw monks of all ages and lots of visitors, both tourists and worshipers.

We went to a café that advertised “free wireless internet” for a lunch stop and to check emails, etc. It turned out that the place didn’t really have wireless, they were freeloading off a nearby unsecured network. Needless to say the connection was a bit weak and we did not spend a lot of time on line.

Our next stop planned stop was the National Museum, which we couldn’t find. The paper copy of the map was at the hostel, I thought I was carrying a pretty good image in my head but it lacked detail (such as an address). In our wanderings we met up with the girls from Oxford, England, who were two carriages down the train car during our ride from Beijing. “Are you enjoying Mongolia?“ “Yes,“ they said, “until we started trying to find places in UB” “Us too, have you seem the National Museum?“ Oh, the National Museum’s easy to find, it’s right across the street from the State Government Building. (I knew that!). “Try finding the Museum of Persecuted Intellectuals“, they said, “now that’s a challenge.“ We left them to it and went on our way.
By the time we got to the museum it was close to 3 p.m. so we decided to eat lunch at the Mongolian Grill outside and save the visit for tomorrow. The meal was great! Back to the Hostel to see if Tuuya has information about the cultural show.

Mongolian Style Pipeline Crossing!

Yes she does, it’s at 6 p.m. and the theatre is about ½ an hour’s walk away. That gave us one hour to relax before we have to get our weary feet back on the road. The highlight of the cultural show was the singing, which we enjoyed so much that we bought a CD featuring the lead vocalist. Trouble is we don’t have a CD player with us, so unless we stay somewhere that has one we won’t hear our Mongolian concert until we get home!

We detoured back to the State Store to buy John more knuckle bones so we can play the Turtle game, then tried to find a place to eat.

No luck for food, even though it was just 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. Places were closed or they were pubs and did not allow children in. In one place the waiter picked up two menus, looked carefully at us and then handed Nelson the one written in Mongolian/Russian! Maybe he really does look Russian! We ended up finishing off our day with snacks in our hostel room and resting our feet - we walked over 20K today!

Our last day in UB and the challenge was the fact that our train left at 9 p.m. and we had to be out of our hostel by noon. So, Nelson and I checked out the “left luggage” department at the station -- try figuring that out in Mongolian and you will understand why it took us an hour just to find out where to leave our suitcases, let alone actually leaving them there!

UB Train station sign....in English

Once that was done we walked to the museum (well worth the effort) and ate lunch at a “fast food” restaurant. Warning to travelers from John and Nelson - take care when ordering foods with familiar names such as “cheese burger”. It will not be the same as what you get in Creston! We then wandered very slowly to the “Brew Haus” which has a legitimate internet connection. John played with the computer, Nelson had a beer and I had a glass of wine. Warning to travelers from Nancy - take care when ordering wine in Mongolia - it will not be the same as what you get in Creston!

We were back at the station with time to spare. John and I watched “Robin Hood” (the Walt Disney animated version) on the station television set. It was dubbed in Mongolian but the songs were in English! On to the train and off to Russia….oh, wait…

We arrived at the Mongolian border at 5:00 am and the two train cars headed for Russia sat there until 8:30 when the Mongolian customs & immigration police came on duty. We left at about 10:30 and arrived in the Russian border crossing at 11:00. We left the Russian border crossing at 4:30 in the afternoon. It was a long day! There wasn’t much to do at the Russian station except watch the Mongolian traders unload their goods at the market beside the station and then get back on the return train to Ulaan Baatar.

The ride to Urkusk took the rest of the night and we got in to the station at about 8:30 in the morning. I was scanning the crowd looking for someone holding up a sign that said “Cobra” or some variation of the name, when a tall man came over and said “Cobra?”. He was Sergey, and he was our guide for the next three days. I asked if he knew it was us because we looked lost and confused and he said no, it was because of John’s age. Pretty obvious, really, there were no other children on the tourist train.