How I made the Police siren ring in Mongolia

And so my travel adventures or rather, misadventures continues. Apparently even in a distinctively Asian Country, my vulnerable and suspicious tourist behaviour did not go unnoticed. After my pretty awesome 6 days 5 nights tour in the Gobi Desert, I found myself with 2 more nights in Ulan Baatar; Capital of Mongolia. The city was reminisce of Singapore in the early 90s but with really bad air pollution and close to zero form of public transport. 

 

 

Mongolia weather has always been erratic, it could be sunshine one day and hail storm the other. In October, snow flake flurries come and go. I had prayed to God to give me a bit of my first snow experience and he answered it by giving Ulan Baatar negative degree weather that day. I jumped awake 730am in the morning to the weather report on my sparkling new Samsung Note 4. My phone said UB was snowing, I looked out of the window and … it was snowing! i grinned like a kid and looked across the bunk to the only roommate awake. I gestured and excitedly mouthed the word "snow" to avoid waking anyone up. He didn't even bother to fake enthusiasm, much to my dismay.

Hallstatt (Austria): Stuck in a slice of Heaven

Hallstatt is the postcard example of the rustic Austrian mountain life. Despite being highly commercialised with tourism as it's main industry. This little village of less than 900 people still marvels. 

Due to a string of hiccups, misreading of instructions and missing of bus/trains... I arrived around 3+ in the afternoon. If anyone is interested in visiting Hallstatt for a day trip,  I highly recommend heading out as early as 6am to make full use of your day. Public transport out of Hallstatt ends early and if you don't drive, you might end up stranded like me. I'll talk more about the misfortune and miracle when the story gets there!

 

Misadventures by Bus to Mongolia

As part of my transsiberian adventure and desire to visit Mongolia, I decided to cross over to Ulan bator(Mongolia) from Ulan Ude (Russia ).

If you are here looking for information about crossing the UB from UU, then check out this other website and spare yourself my emotional roller coaster.

The horror of staying close to 24 hours on the train coupled with the high price, made me decide to take a bus over instead. With the help of my Ulan Ude Hostel owner, I was able to get my hands on a Ticket to Ulan Bator for 1500 rubles (no commission, nothing).

The plan was to stay 2 nights in Ulan Ude and then catch the 730am bus to Ulan Bator. Anna from the hostel indicated to me roughly where I should go to board the bus and I also went down personally (on the first day) to check the boarding station and route out.