Mongolia

November 2008

Not my first trip to Mongolia.  I went earlier this year as well, so this entry is sort of a combination of both trips.  Admittedly both trips have been for work, so I don’t have a great deal to say about the tourism side of things.

A few things.  Getting a visa?  Try to get one before you leave, but I was able to get one on arrival both times which cost US$53 each that need to be paid in exact cash in US dollars.  You’ll need a letter of invitation (from the company you’re visiting, the conference you’re attending, or the tour company you’re travelling with), a spare passport photo (and your passport of course) and the visa fee.  You fill in the application form on arrival.  It’s quick and easy, but check that your country has this option available before you leave!

Getting Mongolian Togrogs?  You can’t buy them outside of Mongolia unless you can find a private citizen who has some leftover to give/sell them to you.  You can get local currency out of ATM’s in Mongolia or there are a few foreign exchange places around (though don’t buy off the street, get them from a bank).  A few places also have prices in US dollars, not many though and certainly this is not accepted outside of the capital.

Don’t drink the tap water.  Only drink bottled water.  The first time I went to Mongolia, I got to the hotel at 1am after a very long day of travel and went to brush my teeth.  I was so tired that I totally forgot about the water problems and used tap water to rinse my toothbrush and rinse my mouth after.  I was sick for about 3 days after that.  So buy bottled water to brush your teeth as well!

The pollution is nasty.  When I was there earlier in the year, I didn’t notice it so much.  But when I was there in early November, it was claustrophobic.  I actually got quite ill at one point this last trip.  Constant headaches, nausea etc.  It’s because it’s winter, temperatures drop easily to -20C overnight.  So everyone has fires going.  And the city is run by coal powered power stations which are only about 10-15km from the CBD, you can see the stacks gushing out smoke from your hotel room.  And it’s dirty coal.  So the combination of the smoke from the fires and the smog from the power stations and the physical landscape of the city (which traps it all) just makes the pollution problem exponentially worse.  If you have asthma or other respiratory problems, be seriously prepared for this.

The hotel?  Both times I stayed at the Bayangol Hotel in Ulaanbaatar (to be referred to as UB from now on).  The hotel is simple, but clean and from my understanding, the best in UB.  It’s where basically all the business people stay when they’re in town.  It’s central to pretty much everything and is reasonably cheap (~US$100/night).  The options for hotels in UB are pretty limited, but this tends to be the pick of the bunch (they’re building a new one at the moment, going to be a ShangriLa, so that may change).  It’s got internet access in the rooms, US$6 for 24 hours access, but it’s really slow if there’s lots of people using it when there’s a conference or something on.  But you can just turn on your wireless and find an unsecured signal pretty easily to tap into.  Breakfast at the hotel is included and is actually really good.  There’s a chef who will cook your eggs for you however you want, just go and ask him!

There’s only a couple of downsides to the hotel I guess.  Firstly, smoking.  Like in China, everyone in Mongolia seems to smoke.  And they’ll light up anywhere.  My room reeked of cigarette smoke, so it appears they don’t have separate smoking and non-smoking rooms.  Even having a shower, the shower curtain reeked of it as well.  Takes a bit of getting used to.  Secondly, the heating.  I know it’s cold outside at night, but the hotel room doesn’t need to be that warm.  I think the heating was set to about 28C.  It was really uncomfortable to sleep in that level of heat.  And you can’t turn it down, it’s all centrally controlled.  I had to kick the blankets and sheets off the bed and leave the balcony door ajar so I could sleep.

Would I recommend this hotel?  Absolutely.  It’s simple, but there’s hot water, the plumbing works, the heating works (which is a lifeline when it’s -20C outside at night, it’s just set a bit high), the beds are comfortable, the staff are great and there’s an ATM in the lobby (which are sometimes hard to come by in UB and since you can’t get Mongolian currency from anywhere other than Mongolia, it’s useful).

What else?  Eating out?  I’ve eaten at a few places.  For lunch I tended to go to Millies.  It’s a little American style cafe near UB Store.  Totally an American style menu with BLT’s and grilled chicken sandwiches and stuff, but I like it.  For dinner, there’s the Irish pub and the German brauhaus!  I can’t remember everywhere I went to eat dinner, but everywhere had decent food and it’s all reasonably cheap.  You can generally get a good sized steak and vegetables type meal for under US$10.

Touristy things?  The state department store is the main place to go for souveneirs.  The top floor is dedicated to souveneirs.  There’s paintings, stuffed toys, felt bags, wooden carvings, fridge magnets etc.  All the usual touristy stuff.  They also sell antiques up there which are awesome to look at, and not obscenely expensive, but were still out of my price range at the time.

The cashmere factories are a little out of the centre of town, but not too far away.  You can buy awesome quality local cashmere and camel wool products there for about 1/2 to 1/3 of the price you’d pay in Australia.  Gobi and Goyu are probably the best ones I saw.

Entertainment wise, there’s a big circus tent type thing about 5-10 minutes walk from the Bayangol Hotel where they have this national Mongolian song and dance spectacular.  It’s good fun and the costumes are amazing.  The music is different, but still interesting to listen to.  Definitely worth a look!

The country is amazing, but be prepared for a major culture shock.  For example, I’d always written off stories of people living down in the steam tunnels under a city as an urban myth.  It’s not.  I saw it with my own eyes.  Manhole covers are missing all over the city and you see homeless people climbing in and out occasionally.  But that’s another thing, beware of missing manhole covers!  You really don’t want to fall down one of those.  So yeah, watch where you’re walking.  Also, UB is very much a city of extremes.  You’ll see some homeless guy with his hands burned off from living in the steam tunnels (because they are actually active) on the street begging for money.  And then you’ll see some woman walking down the street dressed head to toe in the latest season Prada.  There doesn’t seem to be much in-between, you’re either rich or you’re poor.  At least that was what I saw.  Maybe it’s different if you get out of the CBD more.

Will I go back?  I think so, if only for work, but preferably not in mid-winter.  I wouldn’t mind doing the trans-Siberian rail journey at some point so I can see more of the country, but not for a while.

China

November 2008

My first trip to China!  I had a few days layover in Beijing while waiting for a flight out, so I booked a mini-stay through my travel agent in Australia.  It included a few nights hotel accommodation and 2 single day trips to see the sights.  One day to go see the temples and palaces around Beijing and one day to go up to the Great Wall.

The pollution in Beijing wasn’t as bad as I was expecting actually.  It was bad, but I’d had this picture in my mind of not being able to see more than 10m in front of me such was the comments I’d heard from others.  It was unpleasant, but not unbearable.

Also, one other thing, smoking.  I don’t smoke, and I don’t like smoking.  It makes my eyes sting and basically just makes me feel icky.  In Australia and much of the western world, this is now much less of an issue since smoking has more or less been banned entirely in public.  You can’t smoke in restraurants, bars, in buildings etc.  In China, you still can, and people do.  There’s no separation of smoking and non-smoking areas inside restaurants or anything.  People light up everywhere and you can’t ask them to put it out.  I’m not saying that they shouldn’t smoke, they’re well within their rights to do so.  It’s just something you need to be aware of if you’re in China, especially if you have reactions to cigarette smoke.

So first things first.  The hotel?  I stayed at the Holiday Inn – Temple of Heaven.

The good?  Friendly staff, clean rooms, awesome deep bathtub (since my bathtub at home is tiny), great breakfast, decent restaurants/bars, free gym access and free internet (LAN) access in the hotel rooms.

The not so good?  The bed was like sleeping on a concrete slab.  I like a harder mattress, but this was ridiculous.  Also, the hotel is quite a distance from everything.  With a name like Holiday Inn Temple of Heaven, I’d kind of expected it to be near the Temple of Heaven.  But it was still a couple of km away.  And was probably 7-8km away from the CBD and about 5-6km away from other tourist attractions.

Would I recommend it?  Definitely.  But probably not for tourists, purely because of its location.  But if you’re prepared to get taxis everywhere, then that’s probably not such an issue.  It would be a great place to stay for business people though.

Next, playing tourist!  The company I booked all this through organised private day tours for me.  So I had my own guide and car (+driver).

Day 1: Temples and palaces.

I got taken to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City.  Was amazing really.  The line in Tianamen Square to get in to see Mao’s tomb was phenomenal.  I’m not exaggerating when I say there had to be at least 50000 people in that line.  Then we went in to the Forbidden City.  The crowds were insane.  It’s always busy apparently, but I was there on a weekend, so it was worse.  My advice?  Go during the week.  I always thought the Chinese were a polite people.  But get in their way when they want something?  You get swatted away like a fly.  I was in a line to see one of the rooms in one of the buildings and got pushed out of the way by all the natives because “they think they have more right to see it than you do“.  Huh.  I paid my entry fee to get in just like they did.  What gives them the right to deny me access?

But I digress.  I tripped ass up at one point because the ground inside the Forbidden City is quite uneven, and with all the pushing and shoving going on to see things, it’s not hard to miss a big crack in the stones!

So then we moved on to lunch!  And I kid you not, I had the best kung pao chicken ever.  I wonder if I can convince that restaurant to ship me a ton of it back here?  Then it was time for my guide to do her bit for her country and force me into certain shops to buy stuff.  Ended up at some pearl shop.  It was nice, but really not my thing.  And I don’t know anybody who actually wears pearls.  Not even my mother.  So it was a waste of time, but it’s one of those places that you can’t really leave without buying anything.  So I bought some little small pearl necklace which I’ll put away somewhere in the hopes that one day I’ll meet someone who’ll acutally wear the thing.  So while it wasn’t expensive, it wasn’t really that cheap either.

Then we moved on to the Summer Palace.  That was nice I guess, but I wasn’t overly awed by it.  There’s a big man-made lake in the middle, and you can go for a short boat ride across for about 10 RMB on a dragon boat.  That was nice, and made for some nice photo ops of the temples up on the hill. Then we headed back towards town and the Temple of Heaven.  Was a bit boring to be honest.  Though one of the interesting things was to see huge groups of locals inside singing nationalistic type songs as the sun was going down.  Lots of walking that day, so I was tired and more or less just went back to the hotel and crashed!

Day 2: The Great Wall and stuff along the way.

Left early, as we were going to the Great Wall at Mutinayu rather than Badaling.  There’s apparently significantly less tourists at Mutinayu and the wall is in better shape.  I’m just taking others word for it here since I’ve never been to Badaling.

First stop along the way was Ming’s tombs.  Which aren’t really tombs, it’s more just lots of monuments and stuff.  The tombs are actually out in the hills somewhere from what I could gather.  Was a nice place though.  Turning autumnal colours.  And since it’s sort of out in the country side, the air was cleaner and things just looked more alive.

Then off to forced shopping again.  Visited a jade factory.  That was actually something I liked, so I bought a couple of nicknacks.  Expensive though.  You could probably get the same things much cheaper at the markets in Beijing, these guys know it’s a regular tourist stop for tour buses and stuff, so I think they add about 50% markup on everything.  In fact, I saw similar stuff in Beijing airport on the way home for about half the price, so that tells you something.  Also went to some factory that does some french thing called Cloisonne or something?  It’s copper based and they add some kind of enamel/paint over the top of it and make vases and ornaments and stuff like that.  It all looked nice, but way to kitsch for me, so I didn’t buy any of it.  I don’t know anybody else personally who’d like it, but I can imagine it’s probably collectable.  Had lunch at that factory in their restaurant.  Wasn’t bad, but it was western Chinese food.  Deep fried stuff.  Wasn’t particularly impressed really.

Then the long drive up to Mutinayu.  It’s up in the Mountains, and we got to pass through a few small villages on the way.  Didn’t stop, but you got a look at what more rural life was like.  Eventually got there and walked past the hoards of street stall owners trying to sell stuff and took the cable car up to the wall itself.  It’s on quite a steep part of the landscape.  Wandered around for an hour or two, climbed up a fair way.  The size of it is completely mind boggling.  And this was only a small section of it!

On the way down again, I was accosted by several street store owners trying to get me to buy stuff.  Eventually I gave in to one of them because I wanted souveneirs and there’s no actual proper shop there to buy stuff from, only street stalls.  I then proceeded to get ripped off.  I’ll spare the details, but it came down to me unwittingly paying way too much for my souveneirs.  Partly my own fault for not recognising the tourist scam, but also disappointing to realise that the scam is actually operating to such an extent in the first place.  First time I’ve ever fallen for something like this.  My advice?  Be wary of the prices they offer, you’re probably not getting as good of a deal as you think you are.  Even 10% of their original asking price might be too much.  Lesson learned I guess.

Another long day, but back to the hotel again to crash.

One thing that bothered me about the tour thing, was that I’d been told before I left, by many many people who’d been to China before, that tipping was not expected and was not the way things were done there.  I think things there have changed.  I was actually asked by my tour guide and driver for tips at the end of my 2nd day.  That was really off-putting.  Even in the tipping mad society of America, they don’t actually ask you for tips.  It may be expected there and you’ll cop crap if you don’t, but you won’t be asked for it outright.  Some Chinese have obviously adopted the attitude of “you’re from a western country, you can afford it, so we’re going to take advantage of that“.  I don’t mind tipping if someone does a good job, but being asked for a tip was just wrong.

Flew out the next day, and that was the end of my Chinese adventure!

Will I go back?  Maybe.  I think if I do, I will probably jump on an organised group tour or something.  There’s strength in numbers.  Being there on your own, it’s too easy to be taken advantage of.  I’d like to go up in the mountains and see Giant Pandas in the wild or something.

Some trip photos here.