Mongolian sleeping accomodations

We spent most of our nights sleeping at the Angara hotel in Ulaanbaatar. It cost about $30/night. We didn't venture into the Karaoke bar or take a Sauna. Yeah, I know, we missed out. It was completely adequate, about on par with a Comfort Inn. Andy thought it was really nice, and compared to the apartments he lived in, it probably was. We had three very hard single beds and a small bathroom with a shower only. The toilet paper was like crepe paper. It was stretchy and very stiff. It took some getting use to. The heat in the hotel is controlled by the hotel management and comes out of a steam radiator. Guests can't adjust their own thermostat. It's the temperature it is in the room and people just have to adjust. Luckily our room was probably about 65 degrees, so it was good for sleeping.
Undoubtedly, the nicest hotel in Ulaanbaatar is the Chinggis Khaan hotel. It cost over $100/night, so we opted out of that experience. We did go there several times to use the ATM however. It was easy to insert our American VISA cards into the ATM and Mongolian money would magically come out.


Hotel Kiwi is the second hotel we stayed in for two nights in Darhan. It was a real step below the one above. It had three single beds again and a narrow bathtub, definitely not made with American body sizes in mind. At least there was plenty of hot water and the sheets were clean.
The "sleep" on the train wasn't restful. We arrived in Darhan at 3:00 am and made our way to hotel Kiwi, which was a welcomed respite.
We had the opportunity to spend one night in a ger (yurt) resort! It was so interesting. We had fairly comfortable beds with a little stove in the center heating the ger. My bed was closest to the stove, so I volunteered to keep it going during the night. The propriator give us plenty of wood and coal for the fire. Unfortunately, I woke up when it got cold and put too much wood and coal on the fire and I smothered it. Andy came to the resuce and we walked up to the lodge to get matches at about 2:30 am. Again, it wasn't a really restful sleep, but a great adventure. Luckily the temperature wasn't extremely cold that night. Our pillows were filled with rice. Nice!