Monday, May 14, 2012

Arrival in Ulaan Baatar

After getting stucked in Beijing for fifteen hours, I entered the aircraft at midnight. I more or less slept the whole journey and arrived at 2.30pm in Ulaan Baatar. Chinggis Khan International Airport is comparable to Bern, Belp in terms of size and so the passport control and also getting the luggage was a very quick process. Our driver was waiting to pick me and three Mongolian guys up and drive us to town. It was about 2°C but for me it does not seem to be cold. I am only wearing my pullover and that was enough.
The roads are really bumpy, but this is not very astonishing as temperature are most of the year around -40°C and I know how Swiss always argue with the temperature to explain the construction work. I arrived half an hour later in the corporate hotel and went to sleep. The hotel is very modern and I have a room which is more than double the size than the rooms I know from the German hotels. Free WiFi is included in the service, what I really appreciate. I wanted to get up at 9am but I wake up at 11am. I started to get in contact with the members of the Accenture team and Anushka, a manager from the training team, visited me and answered some questions.
I wanted to have a quick lunch, but before I needed to go to an ATM to get some Tugriks (Mongolian currency). I checked the currency rate when I was in Switzerland, but I got a confusion with the Chinese currency and so I will took1000 Tugriks as a first approach. When I passed a little store and saw that cigarettes cost about 18'000 Tugriks I returned to the hotel and checked the rate. The rate is 1 CHF = 1411,1372 MNT, so my 1000 Tugriks were about 0.7 CHF :-). After getting a little bit more out of the ATM a went to the Korean restaurant. I wanted to have a quick lunch and ordered only a soup. Thats what they were bringing:

quick lunch

After eating the great korean food, I went to Monnis Tower, where the administration of Oyu Tolgoi (OT) is located. I met Saruul who guided me to the Finance Building where I met Ariunzaya and Batgerel, which we call Zaya and Bata. Those two girls translate the documents that we create at site into Monglian language. We had a discussion and they told me how they work. They seemed to be very motivated and after the bad experience with the employees in the Mongolian embassy I was very happy to meet Mongolians who seem to work very similar to western standards.
On my way back I shot some pictures from the city center:






There are a few very modern buildings in UB and the people walking around seems to live very similar than we do in Europe. But this is the city center and even here you can see the social differences. It reminds me on trips to eastern europe. I see a lot of similarities to slovakia, the check republic and moscow. They don't care about how their city looks like. It functions and where ever there is money a new buidling is built, but nobody cares for the old one standing aside.
I went back to the hotel and did some administrative work. My flight has been confirmed. I will definitely depart tomorrow 15.05.2012 at 1135am to Oyu Tolgoi.


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