Mongolia Baby - Ulaan Baatar

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Well, here we are in Mongolia and have nearly had Tony's bag pinched and mine too, the LP wasn't wrong with this place warning you to watch out for pick pocketers, they've got very nimble fingers here!!!! UB the locals’ call it is pretty cool though, it’s got a massive US presence due to its geo-political positioning in that it’s in the middle of of Russia and China. As one of only a handful of truly democratic country in Asia, it receives a lot of donations from the USA and various other NGO's, and all embassy staff is in UB, the UN have a big presence here so thankfully we found an amazing Irish pub to have a long awaited steak and burger. Our first day was pretty much spent in the Irish pub with Ben who we met in Russia, we ended up getting totally wasted but totally enjoyed ourselves.

We then tried to get our Chinese visa sorted with a stonking hangover, only to find that they'll only give us a 15 day visa once we had tickets in and out of china, considering the embassy was going to close in a few minutes and we had queued for some time we opted to figure this one out another day. I would arrange my Visa in your home country, people we have spoken to who have their visa's got them with less hassle, double entry ones for 30 days.

Deflated we headed out to see the sights of UB, we took in the Victims of Political Persecution Memorial Museum and the Sukhbaata Square with a massive Chinngis Khan bronze statue by the government building, we tried to take in the History Museum but this was closed so we headed to the Texas Bar for more western food.

The next day was the arrival of Mark who we met in Olkhon Island and the booking of our tour of the Gobi, after handing over 100s of 1000s of Mongolian money to pay for our trip we headed to the natural history museum to see some dinosaur bones and stuffed animals and more western food.

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