I arrived in Ulaanbaatar at about 9:30 in the morning flying in from Seoul on, what would turn out to be a ’round the world’ trip.
Mongolia. A new country and a new capital city. Apparently, some people will shorten Ulaanbaatar by just calling it “UB”, but I was committed to the saying the full name every time. It’s fun to say and even better to read and write. With all those long As. I was excited.
As exciting as it was to land, getting in from the airport was a bit annoying. It is far from the city. There is an airport bus to take you on the approximately 50-kilometre journey, but the traffic is so terrible that the journey can take up to two hours. It took nearly that long the morning that I arrived. It’s bizarre really, there is lots of room for roads through the countryside, but it is a narrow highway congested with too many cars. I was impatient, but I still enjoyed the journey. The scenery was beautiful with rippling hills of green but very few trees. The bus dropped us off in the main square in the city which was just a minute or two from my hotel on foot. The main square was impressive. Imposing buildings some with attractive colours and columns; a giant statue of Genghis Khan – the fellow who would be everywhere – and the weather was nice.
I walked to my hotel the Hotel Nine, which is nothing special to look at but it has an excellent location, a good buffet breakfast, and reasonable rates. The nicer hotels were mostly unremarkable and overpriced.
I went out to explore. Ulaanbaatar didn’t make a great first impression on me. I’m not sure it made it great last impression on me. At least not in terms of beauty. It is, generally speaking, an unattractive city. There are some buildings that are nice, some that look decorative, some that look a little bit Soviet, and there are some beautiful temples, but overall, it is just quite ugly. It is unattractive buildings with busy streets and neighbourhoods that were designed for cars and not walking. It’s not the sort of place that you wander around and explore and get lost in charming little nooks and crannies. But it was interesting and I enjoyed it.
I visited the National Art Gallery which had some nice works of art, but mostly it was interesting to see the very specific Mongolian paintings of nomads and camels and harsh winters on the steppe.
There was a temple area sort of in the middle of town that I wandered over to. I wasn’t able to go inside, but viewing them from the outside was and gave me hope that there would be more interesting things to see.
I walked a lot around the central part of the city that day exploring what there was to see and I wasn’t really loving it. I was having a good time, as I always am when I’m exploring somewhere new, but I wasn’t charmed or wowed or impressed by what I saw. I did visit a little cafe with some vegetarian food, and I went there and had a bite to eat and smoked a cigar. It was kind of a cool place with music playing and lots of young people with neck tattoos and army boots. I was pleased to see that there was kind of a cool alternative subculture. And in walking around the city I have to say that I think Mongolian people are underrated for their beauty. Obviously not every person is beautiful, but the people that are attractive are extremely good looking.
I wandered around some more and found myself on the patio of another restaurant where I had a negroni and a cigar and watch the sunset behind some unattractive buildings. Speaking of the negroni, a fun fact about Ulaanbaatar is that until it was repealed in 2022, on the first day of each month alcohol was not allowed to be sold or consumed. It was a law. Apparently, Mongolia has high rates of alcoholism, but the law was repealed because it just drove drinking and alcohol sales into the black market for that day.
I was tired from my journey and underwhelmed by the city and I didn’t stay out late that night. There also didn’t seem to be anything in the evening that I really wanted to do, so I had an early night. The next day I had booked a driver to take me around to see some sights outside of the city. That day would be excellent, as would my second day exploring Ulaanbaatar which I’ll write about in another post.
And this is one of the downsides of writing a dairy-style blog, The first day was mediocre, but it got a lot better from there. So if you are reading this and thinking “Ulaanbaatar sounds awful” or “Ugh, she didn’t even visit the good spots”, I get it. My next two post will be decidedly more positive. But this was my first day and impressions.
Read on for enhanced positivity. (Nature! Temples! Gers! Cows!)
