UB–First night (Video now fixed)

Graeme:
Just recapping a post from yesterday about us crossing the border. I forgot to mention how we approached the border town on the Russian side, and in the distance was something quite remarkable. From this perspective, the Russian border town was terminated in a perfectly straight line, and on the other side was grass… endless horizon of grass! Quite the spectacle. As it turns out, there is a Mongolian border town which makes up the other half of that urban scene, but from a fair way back, it looked like the end of the earth! What a smashing sensation! I can only imagine the Tsagaannuur border at the other side would do an even better job of this.

Woah, Mongolia countryside is out of this world. Vast and free. Nothing feels off limits. If you want to drive to the top of that hill – go for it! If you want to camp there – go for it!

This video isn’t particularly interesting, but it’s only of like three days between Chita and UB

Up until UB city, the drivers have been brilliant – not a Russian action to be seen. Courteous, slow, safe. In the city, it has been bedlam – worst drive ever. We spent over an hour in traffic which moved possibly 10 blocks. Improvised lanes varied from 2-6 lanes (7 if you count the footpath), Buses were rude, drivers were rude. Ugh, a nightmare. Horns were continuous, often out of frustration at no one in particular. Idiots would drive up the sidewalk and driveways of petrol stations only to cut you off one car ahead. It was futile and stupid rolled in to one. On several occasions when standing still I would touch cars, trucks and buses next to me, just to confirm, ‘Yep, that’s certainly close’. If that wasn’t enough, there were perfectly cut holes in the road, the exact size big enough to swallow one of our wheels. That would not have been cool!

Whilst sitting in traffic my heart sunk to see our sub tank reading below empty. Oh ‘damn’ I thought. It only had 1/4 in it, but it’s no doubt in a stream behind us due to a damn rock having rubbed it’s way through. As we were at a standstill, I got out and tapped the tank. It sounded like it had fuel in it and I couldn’t see any leaks, but I was in no place to make the call. Thank goodness we were not drawing from that tank at the time. Having to prime the engine in that traffic would have been dangerous. Five minutes later, having resigned to the fact that I’d have to drop the tank and repair it, the gauge reading had returned to normal. Go figure? Perhaps it was a warning to get back in to the habit of drawing down each tank evenly rather than keeping all of our eggs in one basket.

We stumbled on a motel which looked way above our price point, but it had parking which enabled us to get out of the madness. We saw four digit prices marked on the walls which were in USD$. Um, before we knew it, we were shown a room before any prices were discussed. It felt like one of those ‘If you have to ask, you can’t afford’ moments. In the elevator ride the lady said $35 per night plus $5 for breakfast. Um… Seriously?! Needless to say we were booked in soon after. It’s clean, modern and has the Olympics on TV. Why is Australia so far behind in the tally?!

Our hotel room did have a horrid smell which has been exorcised with epic quantities of airflow. No doubt a result of the unchanged bucket of ‘waste’ paper. It has a terrific bed with one pillow being like a sack of wheat. Like those weird things people put in the microwave. It does make it easy to sit up in bed and watch TV however.

Our sleep last night was rubbish as it was too hot to close windows, but tiny micro bugs which could have marched 5 abreast through our flyscreens climbed over us all night. Covering with the doona helped, but resulted in overheating. I hope out sleep tonight is better, but the endless horns won’t help.

Tomorrow I will upload the video of the suspected border scammer. Let you mob decide if she was legit.

We’ve received some lovely comments from a couple in Greece – Let us know if you have any specific questions and we’ll be happy to answer them. Thanks to everyone else that’s commented as well!

Photos are online: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/ChitaToUlaanbaatar02?authkey=Gv1sRgCPXJifqSteWlkwE

Here’s a video for the boys of us 4WD’ing into our camp site, boring for normal people.

Cassie:

I have only two things to contribute to today’s blog:-

1. Hotel Restaurant Review – a “glowing” review that the hotel restaurant thought prudent to put on their advertising brochure reads:

“Food was overpriced and greasy, service was alright and seating was quick. Essentially it is everything you expect from a restaurant”

And, just to prove I’m not telling fibs, here’s a picture of said brochure

I think they’ve lost in translation the essence of what they were trying to say. Anyway, we gave it stab and ate there tonight. How could we pass up the opportunity for “overpriced and greasy” food and "alright” service? As it turned out, the chicken and beef salads we had were lovely and tasty (no sign of unwanted grease), the service was exceptional, yes indeed the seating was very quick and it cost us a total of $AUD12.73 including two drinks and a fee for ‘table service’. Ummm, overpriced?!

And number 2. Cold Shower *sad face*. Yep, there’s pretty much no hot water to be had. It tricks you and starts to heat up past the point of freezing cold water but that’s all you get. So, the one luxury other than internet that I love about a hotel stay is a hot shower. Oh well, at least it’s still a shower. But, we can’t complain for $40/night including breakfast delivered to our room at 9am in the morning.