A few travel tips from our stay in UB
UB – short for Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. Is it worth visiting? Yes, it is. We felt safe in UB and in the other cities that we visited as well.
Entering Mongolia
The most common way for a tourist to come to Mongolia is to fly into the capital city Ulaanbaatar. Our flight was from Seoul, South Korea.
In terms of cheap flights, we met other tourists and asked where their flight was from or is going to when leaving Mongolia, and we got two further recommendations for cheap flights: Beijing, China and Istanbul, Turkey.
If you want to avoid harsh winter conditions while visiting Ulaanbaatar, a very good time to visit the city would be during the months June, July, August. We have been there in June-July.
Transportation
There is no metro or underground transportation in UB. If you want to use local transportation, you can use the local buses, which are cheap and plentiful. You can pay for your ride in every bus when you enter the bus at the front. We used the buses for example when we were extending our one month on-arrival visa.
There is rather high car traffic in UB (it was less during the Naadam festival in July). This has also the consequence, that when you take the local bus to get somewhere, you might end up taking a lot longer, because of waiting due to heavy traffic. Although we saw some lanes which are supposed to be used mainly by buses, it doesn’t always help, so if you are planning to go somewhere, where you need to be on time, make sure to check the current traffic conditions and calculate some extra time in.
Most of the time we had plenty of time to walk or just take a bus, but occasionally we used the UBCab app as an alternative to uber (there is no uber in Mongolia).
Speaking of cars, what everybody notices is that there is a super high number of Toyota Prius Hybrid cars – it is the most common type of car in UB and thus highly probably in whole Mongolia.
Usually it is hard to find a parking space for cars. It was easier during Naadam festival, when many locals leave UB.
In many Asian countries and cities we saw many scooters and motorbikes. In UB there are much more cars than scooters and motorbikes.
Many times in the big crossings, cars were blocking each other, because they continued or went into the crossing even on red traffic lights. This was one of the first things I couldn’t understand, why they consistently keep doing it in so many crossings.
As a means of transportation we didn’t see horses in UB used for transportation, but in the countryside, there are some locals, nomads, and tourists who use horses. Some tourists that we met bought 1-2 horses (one for themselves, one for carrying all their stuff like camping equipment, clothes, food) and went exploring Mongolia on a horse. These were experienced people, who have experience with horses, it is not for newbies – newbies can do shorter tours on horses with experienced locals guiding them and taking care of their horses. From what we heard, some people bought a horse for around $500-$600 per horse and some arranged a buy-back clause, that if they bring it back to the seller, he will buy it back for $200-$300.
When traveling by bus intercity, the annoying part was when arriving at the destination at a bigger city, and needed a taxi to go further, the taxi drivers at the bus stops were a bit too into your face and offering rather high prices. Interactions with other locals were usually peaceful and nice, only the taxi drivers at the bus stations were an exception. In UB we solved the challenge of too high prices by calling a taxi using the UBCab app.
Accommodation
When searching for accommodation in UB, we used only two sites: booking.com and airbnb.com
We also stayed at places where we were allowed to use the kitchen as well. To buy certain ingredients we preferred buying groceries in the bigger supermarkets. One of them was located in the State Department Store. The supermarket there is across two floors – it is possible to go down (-1).
Exchanging money in UB to get local currency cash
There is one street in UB which has a lot of currency exchange boots/places on the same side of the street, many right next to each other. You can walk the street, check the rates and choose whichever has the highest rate on that day. They do have different rates. I think I saw around 3 different rates, from which I chose the one place with the highest exchange rate. Make sure to have your passport with you.
In many Asian countries the highest note (paper money) available in the country is a rather small amount (around 5-10 euros for example) – so be prepared that you might get a big, thick stack of paper money.
Local sim card
It is possible to get a tourist sim card with internet directly at the airport – this is the more expensive option, but it saves you time.
We got a sim card with internet access at the official Unitel store in UB. When you enter the store there is a machine which you need to use to print a ticket “for a next customer number” – contains a number, which is then used to call the next customer. The machine did not have English language as a choice, you can choose any service and when asked for a phone number (you don’t have a local phone number yet) just enter many zeros, the goal is simply to get your ticket from it.
Be prepared that it might only be possible to pay in cash there. Sometimes it might be possible to pay by card in this store, but don’t count on it.
They do speak some English there, but at times it might be a bit challenging to communicate. Using google translate app helps – you have to download the Mongolian language first for offline usage in the store.
Once you get a sim card, if you know a local person who also has Unitel and has the app installed, they can help you buy a internet data package for your unitel phone number – the app has much more and better options for data, compared to the few options they offer you in person at the store.
If you stay longer than a month, even if you buy a new data package through the app, you might need to go there in person again and prolong the validity of the sim card itself. The data package you bought before, for example through the app, will be still available – it will not get lost, but by prolonging the sim card, you will need to buy the cheapest option and with that you will automatically get another additional data with it.
Vegetarian and vegan food in UB
We were pleasantly surprised, that there is a rather high availability of vegetarian and vegan restaurants in the capital city of Mongolia. But in the countryside, it is much more difficult to get vegetarian food. Mongols eat a lot of meat, and there is a lot of meat available in Mongolia.
Our personal favorite vegetarian restaurant in UB was Agnista Restaurant. The food we ordered was always delicious.
A bit more pricy, but in terms of options, quality and taste a very good restaurant with vegetarian options is the Indian restaurant Namaste.
If you are close to Shangri-La Mall, there is a smaller vegan restaurant: Foody cafe in it on the 1st floor (not many sitting options), but the food there is also very tasty.
Another recommendation in that part of the city is the vegan restaurant: Foody Vegan Experience Center, which is much bigger and also has a bigger variety of things to order.
You can buy ice cream (the longer soft version from a machine) in the streets. It is very cheap – one scoop costs 2000 MNT which is around 0,50 EUR.
Things to do in UB
Places to visit – just a few recommendations based on the things we decided to visit during our stay:
National Amusement Park
National Amusement Park: you can enter it from the north (just under the Shangrila mall from the outside parking lot) or from the south as well. You can enter and walk in the area for free. You can buy tickets for the amusement carousels also individually, there are a few separate ticketing selling booths in the area, so you don’t buy it at the carousel, but at one of the ticket booths (sometimes could be further from the carousels you are interested to visit). You can buy ice cream and some fast food inside the amusement park area.
The Children’s Palace – Traditional Mongolian Show
The Children’s Palace: this was one of my favorites. It is not the only place for it, but the first one recommended to us, so we saw it there. Every day there is a traditional Mongolian show displaying Mongolian singing and dancing. You can buy your ticket there at 5:30pm, it starts at 6pm. The audience was perhaps only half-full or less than that of the overall capacity, and everybody could choose where they want to sit – there was no pre-assigned seats when buying the tickets. I loved the show! It was around one hour long. It’s a rather old building, not a modern theater, but the seating was comfortable and the show was beautiful.
GOBI Cashmere Store
GOBI Cashmere Galleria Store: probably the biggest cashmere store in UB with a wide selection of items. Even though it is big, in a good central location right next to the Parliament, the prices are not higher compared to other smaller stores and brands, so if you are interested to buy some cashmere clothes, I would definitely recommend to take a look into this huge store. There are different colored goats in Mongolia:
Learning Throat Singing
Throat singing lessons with a local teacher: through Facebook we found out about the possibility of learning some basics of throat singing techniques in UB from a local Mongolian music teacher. He also teaches playing the horse violin, which is a special type of violin. Even though he doesn’t speak English, he understands a little bit of English and we mostly used google translate to communicate which worked quite well. We really liked this experience and would definitely recommend this teacher. We (the two of us) had lessons one hour per day for 5 days and managed to learn some basics of throat singing – we were able to make some of the sounds after practicing – it took 2-3 days in our case to experience our first successful sounds. The lessons were right next to Mongolian State University of Arts and Culture.
Mongolian Archery
Arrow shooting – archery in UB: we also enjoyed archery in UB. We did it one day for about an hour. We found a cheaper option compared to the classical touristy prices. We contacted an archery shop – writing sms to their local number and the daughter of the owner spoke excellent English and she was willing to take us with her car to a place in UB where it was possible to try archery standing (not from a horse). She explained us everything and answered all of our questions. This was a very nice experience and interaction with a person living in Mongolia. They also have a website where they sell Mongolian archery equipment and they also ship to customers all over the world.
Festivals: Naadam festival
Naadam festival: celebrated every year from 11th to 13th July across Mongolia. It focuses on three traditional games: horseracing, wrestling and archery. We visited the festival outside of UB, actually far away near Hatgal. In our case there was a lot of raining during our visit, but it is certainly a festival that is worth visiting. The one in UB might be a bit more difficult to visit – we heard that people need to buy tickets in advance, and it is not easy to buy them. So if you are interested to visit some Naadam festival celebrations, it might be a good idea to look (ask locals, tourist guides, at your accommodation) into some other recommended places in Mongolia other than UB.
Walking in UB – Capital City Pictures
There are sidewalks, so walking in the city center is convenient. There are by far much more cars in UB than motorcycles. There are no annoying people offering you products or services in the streets while you are walking – we always had our privacy and peace.
Here are a few impressions from the city center of UB:
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