After nearly 8 weeks in Russia, it was exciting to arrive in not just another country, but another continent! Ulaanbaatar is very geared to tourists and whichever guest house you have booked with will meet you at the station or airport, so I was speedily picked up and driven to the hostel, which was a relief as the train arrived at 6am and the area around the station is, to be honest, pretty horrible. Ulaanbaatar is the only city in Mongolia, half the population lives here, and the economy is the fastest-growing in the world relative to the size of the country (or so I was told). The result of this is that Ulaanbaatar is currently a building site, especially on the outskirts, as development accelerates. It is interesting but not pretty to look at and
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