Arriving in UB, Mongolia: Our Ups and Downs

In retrospect, despite all that has happened, we'd wholeheartedly recommend staying a few good days in UB. Despite what? Read on.

We arrived in Ulaan Baatar (UB) after the most relaxing 30-hour train ride ever. (we organised the deluxe cabin on the transmongolian railway before we left so we got it for cost price of $150 and it was 100% worth it!! We had a beautiful mohogany cabin all to ourselves, a table, comfy chair and our own washroom -the easiest 30hours ever!)
Anyway, after trotting back and forth between hostels with no vacancy, we finally landed in a nice guest house (Gana's) next to UB's largest Lama temple (Gandan Khild).
On our first day we already got a taste of the great backpack life the city has to offer: really nice restaurants (including delicious pizza and Mongolian mutton shishlik), the friendliest fellow travellers we've met yet and blue skies. Fantastic blue skies. With beautiful white clouds. How we missed them in China!

Our main mission in the first days was to find a good guide/travel company that would take us across the country. Since public transportation is extremely limited/hectic/unreliable, virtually all tourists (and locals) rely on jeeps to travel around this huge country. Anyway, after lots of missioning between different agencies and potential travel-partners, we made up our mind and decided to leave on a private tour with a certain travel agency.
It was Friday afternoon, and that's when our trip in UB, hmmm, became a slightly different one.

I'll spare you the details so that we'd have more to tell in private, but here's the gist:
We went to an international phone call cafe, they overcharged for calls that hadn't gone through, we were nice and suggested to speak with the boss, they refused, started shouting at us and locked us inside their place, we were able to get out (with some difficulty whilst they grabbed us and stood in our way) and run out to our tour company in order for them to help us. However, before we knew it some five big angry Mongolian men were standing in front of the travel company, trying to grab/attack us, demanding the people at the tour agency 'surrender' us to them - for some facial/limb/rib massaging. We asked to call the police but no-one would help us. After a traumatic 30-minutes siege, the police finally did arrive - though we were told that even they may not be able to help us! Frightened and concerned we were taken to the local police station, together with our aggressors, the people from our 'Western' tour agency acting completely pathetic, refusing to help us and practically preferring that we'd get beaten and out of their agency!!
After arriving in the police station, where absolutely no-one spoke English, we were at a loss. But - thank God we came to Mongolia with some local contacts (AHBG - thx!!!!). We were able to call our friend's friend and within 7 minutes we had an interpreter, a lawyer, and best of all - a security guide by our side. After about 15-minutes negotiation through our just-hired lawyer, the business was settled with a handshake and a payment from us of about $2 - amazing how things work - but at least we were free to go.

Interestingly and much to our surprise, as we were exiting the police station, we happened to see the very same owner of the tour company!! They however were there for different business - apparently they tried to rip off another group of travelers on some commission issue. And to think we were just on our way to book the the trip with them!

We celebrated a very nice Friday night in the company of our 'rescue team'. The following day we moved just using taxis, in order to make sure we don't meet anyone unfriendly again, relaxed a bit from the trauma, and reorganized to leave the following day with a different tour company for an 11-day trip.

Aside from this little adventure, we've got nothing but good things to tell you about UB. We got to see an amazing ceremony when a chief North-Korean official came to visit the Mongolian parliament, attended a peculiar traditional performance, and visited the beautiful Gandan Khild.

Lessons Learnt:
1) Behind every girl that tries to rip you off there's probably a big boyfriend/husband who's ready to get you.
2) Always be one phone call away from an interpreter, a lawyer and a body-guard.
3) Unless you're a 800-lb Mongolian-speaking gorilla, try to avoid getting into trouble in unknown territories.

By the end of day, we were obviously extremely happy to leave UB for the countryside, knowing we'd be safe there...

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