20250831 Sunday August 31, 2025 Beijing to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Everyone was at the van at 6am, so we got off to a punctual start. The traffic in Beijing was fortunately very light at that time in the morning. It took just 30 minutes to get to the PEK airport.
Ben and Janet had the first flight out, which was scheduled for 8:45am with the gates closing at 8:30am. Kevin escorted us to the Air China check in counters, which were jammed with hundreds of passengers. It looked like it would take an hour to get checked in, but we asked if there was a separate first class check in, and there was one, but in an entirely different aisle of the check in area of the airport counters.
There was only one person in that line, and they finished up by the time we walked up to the counter. Check in was a breeze requiring only our passports. We had checked in online but were unable to print or download boarding passes because someone had to manually verify our passports.
We then had to go through multiple security screenings. These were pretty intense, requiring Ben to unpack a suitcase and back pack to pull out charging cables, power banks, charging adapters, and a mini Cabela’s leather man like tool. That tool got confiscated even though it only had a 1” blade on it. The pliers must be what they object to. I’ve never head of a plane being hijacked with a pair of pliers, but who said there had to be logical behind any of these procedures. They manually wand and give you a good pat down, front, side, back and middle.
Exiting Chinese customs was also pretty easy, although Ben’s agent insisted on getting a Chinese Name for Ben because he had not listed on the immigrations form. He ended up showing her the characters from our WeChat messages, and that seemed to satisfy her.
We did have just enough time to check out the China Air first class lounge, where we had some breakfast. We had grabbed some instant ramen bowls, fruit and yogurt and sat down before we realized there was a whole hot foods counter just a little further down the lounge with a full Chinese and Western breakfast items. But we were fine with slurping down the Ramen and then heading for the gate.
There was a meal service on the flight with western and Chinese options. We tried the Chinese option which had a couple of dumplings, congee, fruit slices, a salt preserved egg and cucumber slices. We were both pretty full from the Ramen, so just had a sampling of the breakfast and sent it away.
The flight was just 3 hours, and we both napped through most of it. There was no inflight entertainment system in this first class cabin. It must have been a pretty old 737.
We arrived a little late in Ulaanbaatar, but were pleasantly surprised at how modern and uncrowded the airport was. We walked straight through to customs where there was no line. They had at least 6 lanes and all were staffed with smiling staffers who had us face the camera and then waved us through. All our bags arrived, although ours seemed to be the last ones to pop out of the carousel.
Our Viking Cruises Guide was holding up a Viking Cruises sign at the exit and was easy to spot. We were the first, and as it turns out, the only passengers to arrive on this flight. Our Guide, Alma, said she was expecting 4 others to be on the same flight.
Our Mongolia Driver Nambug
There was some furious calling around and we waited for about a half hour before she took us to the waiting bus. Viking had chartered a Minibus without a dedicated luggage area, so the guide and driver loaded up our bags and put them on seats in the back. Then we piled in.
The drive from the airport to Ulaanbaatar showed a dramatic contrast between the countryside, where this new airport has been constructed, and Ulaanbaatar downtown, where their old airport used to be. The airport is about an hour’s drive from the hotel. The first 45 minutes is flying through the country side on a 6 lane freeway with no traffic. To the sides are vast stretches of green pastures and hillsides stretching as far as the eye could see, dotted with cattle and an occasional Ger, which is what Mongolians call Yurts. Apparently, lots of peoples of the Asian steppes use these circular portable dwellings, and they have different names for the same thing.
As we approached Ulaanbaatar, there is clearly a lot of new development taking place, building new suburbs with high rise apartments and shopping complexes. The Japanese are financing and directing a lot of this development.
From the suburbs, the city then quickly becomes very dense and the traffic slows to a crawl. Off in the distance there are still verdant hills. One odd thing is that cars on the roads can have steering wheels on either side of the vehicle. A lot of the vehicles that end up in Mongolia come from places like Japan and Korea second hand.
Before Ulaanbaatar became a dense urban city, that wasn’t an issue, but now they are trying to figure out how to clean up that mess because they do drive on the right side of the road like we do in the US, China, and Korea.
Shortly after we hit stop and go traffic, we were suddenly told to grab our backpacks and hop out of the bus. Apparently, the missing passengers came in on a later flight and the bus needed to turn around and go back to the airport to pick them up. Our guide quickly hailed a car by simply waving her hand. We piled into a Toyota Prius with a young college aged woman behind the Japanese styled right sided steering wheel. She was not using any sort of app like DiDi, Uber or Lyft. Apparently, people in Ulaanbaatar do this all the time. We have no idea how payment between parties works out, but we got dropped off at the Shangri-La Hotel without issue.
The Shangri-La is a very nice business class hotel. They do provide us with 4 bottle of drinking water daily for brushing our teeth and drinking. There is a mini-bar with very expensive snacks and drinks which we won’t be using. Outside the window, there is a huge theme park with a huge roller coaster, Ferris wheel, and even a castle with a lake around it. The backdrop of lush green hills is striking.
Our missing passengers eventually made their way to the hotel. Our luggage made it up to our rooms with those passengers.
We headed out at 4pm to visit the Chinggis Khaan Museum. This is a massive museum with 9 floors of exhibits on the natural history and anthropology of Mongolia and the history of the Khaan dynasty which had once ruled from the Mediterranean to the Korean Peninsula. There is a set of really impressive doors on the front of the building, although the actual real entrance is just off to the side of the massive decorative door.
Giant Cashmere tapestry
Deer Stones
Mythical beasts
Plenty of Gold in Mongolia
Our Viking guide, Alma, acted as English translator as a prominent local historian took us on an express tour of the most culturally significant artifacts in their collection. It would be easy to spend a couple days exploring this museum, but we had a lot of jet lagged people who were probably pretty close to passing out. It’s a good thing there wasn’t a movie presentation during the tour. The room would have been filled with snoring.
We got to meet our fellow Viking travelers. We might be the youngest couple of the group, although two other couples are probably very close to us in age. There are 5 couples in total. Francis and John are from Austin, TX. Cathy and Ernie are from W. Virginia, just outside DC. Marianne and Bob are from Maryland, and Don and Donna are from southwestern Michigan, about a 40 minute drive from Kalamazoo. There are a few who may have a bit of Parkinsonism, and many with hearing aids. Janet tried to call the seat closest to the guide on the bus claiming to be really hard of hearing, but she may have to arm wrestle at least 3 of the men for that title in this group. All are very well traveled and experienced travelers.
We stopped at Sukhbaatar square in front of the Mongolian Government Palace. This is an impressive modern building with massive statues of Chinggis Khaan and some of his most important lieutenants. We did learn that Mongolians had to give up their native language script when they were part of the USSR. They had to adopt the Cyrillic alphabet and adapt their language to it. But after the fall of the USSR, there has been progress in restoring the use of Mongolian script, which a beautiful vertical script.
We concluded the evening with a dinner sponsored by Viking at the Mongolians Restaurant, which is located with a mall attached to the hotel complex. We got to sample two types of Mongolian dumplings. There was a steamed dumpling very much like Chinese dumplings, but these have a wetter filling, and are generally not eaten with soy sauce or vinegar. There were also some flat dumplings with meat filling. These looked a bit like a stuffed naan and were quite tasty.
We passed around a couple of salads including a potato salad which originates from Russia, but the Mongolians now call it their own. Most people opted for a Mongyu tenderloin for the main course. This is a Yak/Wagyu beef hybrid. We had also tried some mutton soup featuring the famous/infamous sheep butt fat. The soup was good and not at all gamey. The fat was also surprisingly bland, but with a bit more texture than pork belly.
We received instructions to pare down our belongings to the bare essentials to be put in a back pack to be carried on a Cessna private charter, which will fly us into the Gobi desert tomorrow after we tour more of Ulaanbaatar. We will then be ferried by Landcruisers from the airstrip to the hotel. Our luggage will be transported by truck in advance over 800km over some pretty bad roads to the hotel, so we have to have our bags out for pick up before 10pm tonight. This is going to be a real adventure.
