It’s now our second day in Mongolia, Ulan Bataar to be precise. We’re staying at a large hostel, which holds about 70 people, so it’s given us good chance to meet up and chat to a load of other backpackers; although it does kinda rub it in that the journey we’re doing isn’t completely unique. Still, it did give us a good excuse to go out and sample the Mongolian night life in a group last night.
I say sample the Mongolian night life, we actually went to Dave’s Place, a bar run by an English guy. It was fairly dead in there so we decided to look else where for more authentic Mongolian night life, which led us to the Irish bar (I know, it’s like the Costa-del-pub crawl). Still, the place was full of Mongolians having a good time, so it kinda worked. I think we should really try to go to a local place at some point though.
After the bar we tried to seek out the night club life, that didn’t quite work though. The place we went to turned a little sour looking after the waiters were trying to fight over who got to serve us, and in the process also kicked a load of locals out of the head table so that we could have it. The sober people of the group worked out that ticking off the locals in a night club wouldn’t be the best idea, so we left. After hunting round the streets for about an hour without finding any other open drinking places, we decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel.
Yesterday day time was spent wondering round the city centre, getting our bearings and figuring out where the stores were. We stumbled across the river that runs (or trickles through the city, which was impressive enough to take a photo of.
We then popped into a local cafe bar (where the locals were eating) and bought some lunch. Having no understanding of Mongolian, Patrick (Our newly met Irish friend) took the wise tactic of ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, which was about 80p. The result was inspired, after a few minutes wait, the guy brought over these sizzling dishes that smelled amazing (especially after living on Russian microwaved food for so long now).
It consisted of some sort of meat, probably beef, lots of veg (onion, carrot and courgette), crinkle cut chips, omelette and a side of rice. It was incredibly nice and made our wallets very happy.
We then took a look around the city square, where they’re currently finishing a new parlementary building, which has some very impressive statues of Ghengis Khan and Mongolian Warriors.
From there we went to visit the Natural History Museum (Very educational) where they had some impressive displays of dinosaur bones and lots of stuffed animals. Sadly they were very restrictive when it came to taking photos, so I had to be quite sly in getting some.
That was pretty much our first day in Mongolia. Oh, apart from Tom treating himself to a new pair of sandles (his last pair died in Russia).
We’re now currently trying to organise a trip out to see some of the sights of Mongolia (beyond the capital), by hiring a jeep and a driver for about a week, but we’re lacking in any fellow travellers to try and split the cost with as most of the people we’re meeting don’t have the days available to do it. If it doesn’t happen, then we’ll get it done another way.
Today
Today is September the 28th as you well know, which is a very special day for Tom, as he’s just stepped into his thirties, old guy. So tonight’s going to be a night of celebrating this landmark achievement, not just for him stepping into a new decade, but also for me as I’ve now got a new thing to tease the old guy with 
This morning we walked over to the Korean Embassy as we’ve decided to go there after our first stint in China. It was shut so we couldn’t organise our visas; something we’re probably going to have to do in Beijing now. But on the way back we stumbled across a Museum of Mongol Costumes, containing some amazing exhibits of jewelery, weapons, trinkets, tools and games from throughout Mongolian history (it also made us even more exited about seeing the film Mongol which has been heavily advertised throughout Russia). I managed to get one photo of the place, again it was another museum where they didn’t want us to do it. Cunningly Tom got the guide to go and get a pen so we could write in the visitors book, which gave me enough time to snap a quick shot of Ghengis Khan
So there we are, if you want to view more photos from our first few days, just click on the link below.