Alright, I am using this blog to share my stories of Mongolia. We are already 2 weeks in Mongolia.. Ulaanbaatar.. a whole new experience. First things first, I will start from the beginning.

The journey began on the 28th of May, after a rather quick goodbye at Schiphol (I'm terrible with saying goodbye, not in a dramatic sense, but I just don't know what to say besides "bye see you in a few months"), it all began. We had no idea what to expect, being very busy finishing courses for uni and sorting out visa stuff, we haven't really had the chance to fully read into Mongolia. I never really read a lot about a country before I go as it gives maybe unrealistic expectations, but now I really had no idea whatsoever. After a long journey we arrived very jetlagged in Ulaanbaatar. Our first challenge arose.. how much tugrik is 1 euro? we kinda had to figure that out before taking our money from the ATM. No money would mean no taxi. So as tired as we were, we tried to figure it out. It turned out to be a good idea because 1 euro is 2225 tugrik. We felt rich for a moment after receiving notes of 20000 tugrik.

It was 8.30 in the morning by the time we arrived at our hostel and we felt so jetlagged as we kind of skipped the night. After the second flight took off in Moscow, we saw the sunset while seeing the sunrise 3 hours later. Sleep, all we could think about. There is no structure or logic in the way the city is build. Luckily our driver knew where to drop us of because we probably would get terribly lost if we were going to look for 1st 40 myangat Bld# 8 No 7, 1 st khoroo. Well, good luck finding that.

We passed out in our little room and woke up at 2 in the afternoon. Oops we slept too long. Only then we noticed our weird room. We felt that the bed was kinda hard and after checking it turned out just to be a pile of carpets. On the wall we saw a nice tv, with right next to it a big hunting gun with the legs of a deer. We dragged ourselves out of our 'bed' in order to explore the city a bit.

Again, the randomness of this city got my attention. Old buildings, new buildings, it's all there. City life seems to take place around the main street of the town that goes all the way from west to east. I find it a rather ugly city, a lot of buildings are left from the sovjet times, which have no athmosphere. The people however were fascinating. We sat down at a place where we enjoyed a good coffee and where we could observe city life of Ulaanbaatar. Most of the girls looked surprisingly fashionable. Fancy handbags, high heels, dresses were often seen. There we were with our hiking boots, comfortable clothing, a little out of place.. tourists...

Next stop, the main square with a large statue of chenggis khan (Mongolian's pride). The main square was a meeting place for young families and kids could rent a bike or a little racecar to ride around the square, it was a happy sight. We were also able to witness some performances of kids, dressed in coloured dresses were dancing on the square. It turned out to be a Sunday and it was a weekend thing, the next day when we walked to the square again the streetscape had changed from young families, to youth spending time with friends after school had finished. The quiet city has turned into a crazy traffic chaos.

Well, I am used to the traffic chaos in South-East Asia.. but nothing compares to Mongolia. They take traffic chaos to a whole new level. Although there are no other vehicles but cars on the road, we have not quite figured out the logic of this traffic. The cars keep on honking to each other and if the other vehicle doesn't stop or move, they just keep driving. We have seen countless of accidents on the road, no bad ones (you can't drive fast here anyway) but we are not surprised anymore if we see cars crashing into each other in the middle of the road, or in the middle of a crossroad.

We have spend 3 days in the city and tried to arrange stuff for our visa. The director of the park came to pick us up to go to the immigration. He gave us lots of information about the city. On the way he showed us the 'slums' of Ulaanbaatar, where people seem to live in 'normal' houses or the traditional gers, but without any electricity and water. Areas that are easy to miss as they were not easily visible. Who looked further than the high appartment buildings, could see the slums build against the hills. Where some would classify this as slums, the director told us that not all those people were poor and that most of them had jobs in the city. As we drove through the city, he told us that depending on the number of the registration plate of the car, was determined whether you could drive on a monday, or you could drive on a tuesday. Apparantly a common rule in busy city centres, very interesting.

The visa debacle.. where we had some troubles before even entering Mongolia, the trouble continues while being in Mongolia.. To make a long story short... we came on a tourist visa as we got a message too late that we could pick our student visa up all the way in Brussels. We were told to come on a tourist visa and then change the visa to a student visa while being here. So off to the immigration, get a stamp and it's sorted. Well, we wish it went this way. After 2 hours waiting time, the conclusion was that this cannot be arranged anymore. Sorry new law, they have to go abroad to get the student visa stamp. Yeah sure, no problem, applying for a visa for Russia or China is not difficult at all. *not*. Driving to Russia is 'just' 4-6 hours and driving to China is about half a day. Well the director was going to take care of it, so we just had to wait in patience and tried not to stress. We have been patiently waiting for two weeks and time started to tick as a tourist visa is only valid for 30 days. We figured out it was easier to apply for a Chinese visa than for a Russian visa. Well, China it is.

As this story was quite long already, I will write a next one about the park. To be continued. Tomorrow we are going to try to arrange a Chinese visa and then off to the park again, off to no more internet, quietness, paradise.