A little gem (Hotels in Mongolia)

Member Name: moongod

Product:	Hotels in Mongolia
Date:	04/03/02 (251 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Great hosts, Meet with other travellers

Disadvantages: Difficult to find on first visit

Mongolia is not geared towards easy tourism, although it is learning and more and more hotels and guest houses are popping up all over its capital city, Ulaanbatar.

The Bayangol and Flower Hotel are standard 2-3 star accommodation in fading Soviet blocks, not far from Sukhbatar Square. The Genghis Khan is Western standard and has the attached Sky Mall, a Western Style mall, although to the East of the centre it is not as well located as the Bayangol or Flower. The Palace Hotel is in the South of the city - brand new and squeaky clean with a vast marble-lined lobby. So new, the taxi drivers don't know where it is (you will need to take a taxi to get anywhere). Get the directions written in Mongolian before you leave...The staff are inexperienced, but the rooms are well-fitted (with rust-coloured water when it rains!). The Genghis Khan and the Palace Hotel cater for foreign businessmen and come with prices to match (in Sept 2001, the Palace was $80/night).

These might not seem expensive until you compare them to the guesthouses. These range vastly from mattresses on the floor in dirty apartments to properly organised hostels. If you come in by train, you won't have any problems finding one as touts line the station platform when the international trains come in.

A friend recommended the Khongor Guest House to me. It is run by a fantastic English-speaking couple, Degi and Tura (Khongor is the name of their son). All the people I met at the Khongor had come from other places and been so disgusted with their surroundings that they had to find another place. Benefits included daily, thorough cleaning, laundry service, good location (behind the state department store), a fully equipped kitchen, hot shower, privacy curtains, lamps. The owners also ran tours, provided a taxi service and did adhoc translations and lent out their CD collection! At $4/night (average), it is good value for money and you'll also meet up with trav
ellers for hints and tips on places to go. Private rooms are available, but the bunks are comfy enough and surprisingly, there's plenty to see in town so you won't actually be there that much (as the location is only a couple of blocks from the central square)

Guesthouses can prove invaluable for foreigners based here long term as accommodation is not formally organised and it is extremely difficult to track down vacant flats (it is usually done via the Mongolian nationwide network of relatives!). Guesthouses invariably have some through-flow of VSO and Peace Corps volunteers. You'll be guaranteed encounters with some real 'characters' - after all, something has to drive them to go the edge of blue heaven.

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