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3 September:

The morning sun woke us around 07h00, the man and his son were already awake and sitting on the lower bunk. We cleaned up as much as you can in a train and sat down, receiving hot water moments later with which to make coffee. A while later a youngster appeared selling noodles, the man bought one for himself and then proceeded to buy two for us also. I tried to pay him back, but he wouldn't take the money. The rest of the time was spent mostly looking out the windows at the tundra as it passed us by. It was obvious that the man was puzzled at our fascination with the grasslands.

At last we arrived, we were supposed to have come at 10h00, but due to delays it was already 12h00. We had hardly jumped off the train when we were flooded by taxi drivers who wanted us to use them. In the end one very persistent one followed us around. He took us to an office where we tried to call UB guest house to make a reservation, mostly with the hope that they would send a taxi to collect us. Unfortunately they were full, but we were able to get room at Golden Gobi although they weren't interested in helping us with taxi fare. The woman seemed very uninterested in whether we came or not, probably one of those guest houses overrun by people due to the Lonely Planet.

We paid the driver 4 000 Tugric and he drove us the 15 minutes to the guest house, first stopping along the way to allow me to draw some money. We arrived at the guest house, jip, one of the LP places everyone goes. They get so overrun by guests that they really don't care. We were shown a dorm room at $6 a bed, the private rooms were over $20 each, the most we had seen anywhere! We settled in and went exploring through the city, anxious to see some sites and get food. We started first with a walk through the State Department Store, just opposite from the guest house, it was like a pick n pay, but had very limited variety.

After this we went in search of some cheap eats, problem was that Mongolians apparently didn't like to eat street food. Rather they eat only in restaurants and that escalates the prices quite a bit. The places were really expensive and then it wasn't only the western food, it was all foods. We found one that served something similar to dumplings and gave it a shot, double as expensive as in China and not nearly as nice. We tried one more place, before becoming frustrated and heading back, stopping along the way to do some research on tours.

The tours were really expensive if one wanted to do it with only 2 people, we were still torn in two between saving the money and going with people we didn't get along with or paying more than we were really comfortable with. Heading back we stopped at one more place, Tseren Tours, there the woman was really helpful and was able to give us much information. The prices were still very expensive $130 for the both of us if we hired a 4x4, driver and guide including all accommodation and food. They had a really nice 18 days tour and they were willing to give us 2 ½ days camel rides and 1 day horse riding at no extra cost. The price however was almost R20 000 for the 18 days and this was far more than we wanted to pay. In the end we went back to the hostel to think it over. We found some people who had hired a driver only and gone at it on there own with tents, we had the option of purchasing the tents and doing the same at a huge discount. We went back to find out whether this would be an option, she was reluctant telling us that no drivers spoke English and we would have it difficult finding accommodation and food. This settled it for us and we decided on the trip, our tour was coming to an end and this would be something we would always remember, traveling 3300km through Mongolia.

Unfortunately I had to pay 5% costs due to paying with my credit card, I had tried to do the payment via internet banking, but couldn't find the Mongolian bank to pay into. Also I called Investec and spoke to my private banker, they could do it but required a day or two to get the paperwork sorted out, this wouldn't work. In the end I paid the $125 fee! We walked out to find food for the evening, both very much shaky having parted with so much money. After dinner we tried to update the blog as much as we could, although this also took almost an hour, then it was time to speak to the parents for the last time in 18 days. We only made it to bed after 01h30 and were exhausted by then.