Ulaanbaatar also known under the name Ulan Bator, but often called just UB, is the capital city of Mongolia. When entering the country by plane, you will fly to Ulaanbaatar. We flew in from Seoul, South Korea – usually the flights are one of the cheapest from there. It is also possible to enter Mongolia by train for example from Russia or China. If you choose to travel by train, you can get a lot of useful information from here.
From Ulaanbaatar, there are some flights available inside of Mongolia for example to the cities Murun and Khovd, but not every day. They are 1h flights. Going by car or bus takes considerably longer, is less comfortable, but on the other hand is cheaper, more adventurous, and you see more of the Mongolian landscapes.
During our stay in Mongolia we actually took a bus from Ulaanbaatar to Murun – we bought the bus ticket online (the website is only accessible from within Mongolia if you don’t use VPN), which was good, because that way we had reserved seats. We asked a local person (from the accommodation we stayed at) to pay for it online and we gave cash to that person. Both times we traveled by local bus, the bus was completely full.
Actually there is another cheap way to travel in Mongolia other than by bus – with a local person by car (not taxi, not a private driver, but ride sharing) – there is a facebook group only in Mongolian language – if you meet/know a person who speaks Mongolian, you can ask him to join it and ask there whether somebody is traveling to a certain place you are planning to visit, then you can share driving costs, the price should be around the same or cheaper than traveling by bus. We traveled like that once, and it was cheaper than by bus.
Visa Extension in UB
Is it possible to extend my on-arrival Mongolian visa? If you received a free on arrival visa (currently in 2024 most of the eligible countries get 30 days) when you entered Mongolia, you can extend it once by up to another 30 days in person in the capital city Ulaanbaatar/UB at the Mongolian Immigration Agency (ground floor: when you enter the building through the main entrance turn right).
When we arrived at the airport (Chinggis Khaan International Airport), we got a stamp in our passport together with the date of arrival in it – but no date of last day we have to leave. We didn’t have to pay anything, the whole process at the airport was fast and without any complications. The current regulations when we entered the country (June 2024) were, that we (residents of Slovakia and Austria) can stay in Mongolia for 30 days.
From what we heard from other tourists we met, you can go extend your visa immediately without having to wait a certain minimum number of days, which is good, because if you want to leave UB almost immediately after arrival and start traveling inside of Mongolia, then you don’t have to come back to UB again just to do the visa extension – depending on where you are, coming back could be a really long distance in hours by car/bus. We extended our visa following the recommendation to do it at least 5 days prior its expiry date. Extending the visa means: you want to stay longer than 30 days, but maximum 60 days in total. But check your country you are from, some countries may have special regulations.
Extending the visa was really easy. We went there from UB city center by the local city bus. You can find the nearest bus stops easily on google maps. Buses in UB go very frequently, every few minutes. A bus ticket is very cheap only 500 MNT per ride per person and you just give the money directly to the driver, or sometimes there is a transparent box next to him when you enter the bus in the front. No need to say where you are going or at which station you want to get off. Just make sure you have such a small bill before you board the bus. In UB there are traffic jams all the time, so it is common that it may take almost an hour or even longer (having something to read or research on the internet helps use the time) to get to the Mongolian Immigration Agency from the city center. It could be faster by car, only if an alternative route has less traffic. If I had to do it again, I would go by bus again.
We could pay for the visa extension by card, in our case a prepaid wise card. Here you can find the prices for visa extension.
They do speak and understand some English, so it was not needed to use some translation apps.
The only thing we had to bring with us was our passport, 1 photo, and money, and your own pen is usually helpful as well. You have to glue the photo on the paper form – they provided us the glue as well as the paper form – you have to ask for it when you arrive. The paper form is easy to fill in and doesn’t take long to fill in. Know how many days you want to stay longer, maximum 30 more days. The amount you have to pay depends on the number of days, each day longer costs more, but you have the flexibility you don’t have to pay for a whole month if you want to stay only lets say 11 extra days.
The whole process inside the building took maybe around 30min, even though we arrived in the middle of the opening hours. In other countries people recommend to come as early as possible, here in UB there are not that many tourists who want to prolong visa compared to some much more popular destinations such as Thailand, so usually there are no long waiting times. There were perhaps 5-8 other people during our stay there, but others told us there was nobody else when they did it. It takes longer to get there than the process inside the building. After we asked for and filled out the simple form and gave them our passport with it, we received it back after waiting for like 10-15min, it contained the date till we can stay in the country.
Overall the visa extension in UB went without any complications, it was quick and easy.
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