East Asia
Mongolia
Ulaanbaatar
Bayangol District
Adequate twin room with wifi, private bathroom and a light breakfast for two, for MNT 23,000.- or US$ 17.50 per night. 15% discount for members of the Konni & Matt Travel Blog.
Click below for an interactive road map of the Danista Nomads Hostel, which we would recommend, and for directions:Visiting the dusty but atmospheric Choijin Lama Monastery +97611324788 (admission: MNT 2,500.- or US$ 1.85 per person), an elaborate ensemble of Buddhist architecture that blends Mongolian, Tibetan and Chinese styles (thus recalling memories from our visit to the yellow-hat lamas’ 15th-century CE Spituk Gompa near Leh/Ladakh in India in 2011), which had functioned as an active monastery and home to about fifty Buddhist monks but was permanently closed in 1937 CE during the communist religious purges (and turned into a hard-line atheistical-revolutionist museum).
Konni: Recovering from our trip to Central Mongolia's platteland and the Orkhon Valley, a 121,967-ha UNESCO World Heritage Site of pastureland on both banks of the Orkhon River, and refreshing my female mind with a visit to Ulaanbaatar’s International Intellectual Museum +97611461470 www.iqmuseum.mn (admission: MNT 3,000.- per person), a mind-boggling collection of puzzles, logic games and other brain-jogging equipment from all over the world.
Matt: Recovering from our trip to Central Mongolia's platteland and the Orkhon Valley, a 121,967-ha UNESCO World Heritage Site of pastureland on both banks of the Orkhon River, and refreshing my male body with the help of those skilful Mongolian massage ladies from the top-notch UB Massage Spa +97611360524 (“Your time spent in our relaxation centre will be memorised as a unique moment of life.”): one hour of an all-encompassing, hot Japanese body massage for MNT 25,000.- or US$ 18.40.
Taking the daily overnight train from Ulaanbaatar, simply just UB, back to the border town Zamiin-Uud (575 km, 16 hours, MNT 9,600.- or US$ 7.15 per person for “hard seats”, which turned out to be foldable and reasonably comfortable “hard-sleeper” bunks) and thereafter, on the next morning, one of the shuttling border-crossing coaches (8 km, 5 ½ hours including border-crossing wait time, CNY 50.- or US$ 7.85 plus CNY 10.- or US$ 1.50 road tax, per person) from Zamiin-Uud’s train station right to Erlian’s clean and well-organised bus station: “Nihao, and again, welcome to Red China's brave new world.”
Click below for more blog posts about wondrous Asian massage salons
Click below for a summary of this year's travels
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| Facing China © Konni & Matt |
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