Mongolia

The day started earlier, around 9 AM today. I didn't sleep well and was awake from around 1.30 AM on and off. We were getting a bus tour of some sights around UB. Traffic wasnt too bad so begin with, so we made it to our first destination just before 10 AM. This was a memorial to a Russian tank as well as a memorial to the Russian and Mongolian Soldiers who fought in several conflicts and against China to gain their independence. This involved a climb of around 150m on what seemed an endless number of steps. The view from the top was worth the walk though.  We stayed up there long enough to catch our breath and then made our way half way down. By this time the shopping mall was opened so we could get a lift to the bottom. The shopping mall was just opening and werent really there to shop. We did stop at a souvenier shop where we saw some seabuck thorn juice. This apparently has some antioxident properties so we thought we would give it a try. It had an orangey honey taste, ...

We had a good meal last night at the small restaurant attached to the hotel, although the messed up the rice order. I ordered a small bowl of white rice and they came out with a large bowl of fried rice. When the waitress saw the mistake she quickly came over and whisked it away and had it replaced. Our first night in the hotel we slept pretty well. Waking at around 7 AM we had our morning coffee and then tried to find an English speaking channel  out of the 100 or so on the TV so we could see what is happening in the world. We found a channel with an Australian program listed as the title only to find it was about some guy in the Us who owns a fleet of Hummers and 9 Blackhawk helicopters.  Very Australian! After breakfast my mission was to find a local sim card so I can maintain some form of contact with the world when we are in the lakes region. There was supposed to be one in the Gobi Store 2 doors down. Unfortunately they were no longer there, which turned out to be a righ...