2022.10.03-04. The physical journey

Or our day spent travelling and our first day in Ulaanbaatar.

 BUD - IST

After a busy day of packing, tidying, organising, cleaning, and all kinds of last-minute stuff yesterday, we had a mere 3 hours of sleep to start us off on this journey – our biggest one so far.

My parents, on their way to drop my brother off at school, took us (and our 60 kgs worth of luggage, not counting the backpacks) to the airport where we met my in-laws to say goodbye to them as well. Surprisingly (and thankfully) enough, there were no big displays of emotion and crocodile tears and such, just a few awkward pictures, and then we went through the security check and soon enough boarded our flight to Istanbul.

Packing up a whole household is tough. These were all the bags we took.

The flight itself was probably the best one I’ve ever had. We were sitting in one of the exit rows, meaning we had lots and lots of leg room – and by a streak of luck, nobody sitting next to us on the aisle seat –, and the plane itself was also really cool, in my opinion. There were tablets on the back of every seat (and for us in the emergency row, they could be pulled up from underneath the armrest) and they had in-flight entertainment like movies and shows and games and such; we started watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, of course. What I’d found really interesting was that it was not the flight attendants giving us the safety instructions before take-off but there was a video displayed on the tablets instead – first in Turkish, then in English.

The best movie one could ask for on a flight. Or anywhere really.

Apart from the comfy space and pleasant atmosphere (not only did they have tablets and gave us complimentary earphones to use with them, but there was also a nice, ambient-like music playing during boarding and taxiing after landing), there was a huge surprise for me as well when they started giving out drinks and snacks and as they reached our row, the flight attendant handed me a vegan breakfast tray. Obviously, this should not have come as a surprise if I had been in on the meal options they provide for passengers, but as it was my husband who had booked the tickets and he had carefully kept this a secret, I was pleasantly surprised when I realised I would have a breakfast that I actually wanted to eat. And it was also pretty tasty, to be honest.

My vegan breakfast on the BUD-IST flight - I was incredibly happy about it.

Not really knowing what to expect from our 6-hour stay at Istanbul airport, we started strolling around the terminal, gawking at stuff and checking shops out at random. Found many interesting things (from baklava-towers at the duty-free shops to so many cool LEGO boxes and a Hamilton funko pop!) – even stumbled across a museum, right next to the pet toilet, if you’d believe it.

ATC tower in Istanbul - maybe less 'iconic' than ours but looks better imo

Advertising skincare products with a SKELETON - way to go Turkey!

Just heaps and heaps of Turkish sweets.

This is just a small portion of the airport - this place was huuuuge!

Deciding that we needed someplace nice and out-of-the-way to sit down and chill (and maybe snack a bit too), we headed for the iGA lounge. At first, I wasn’t convinced that it’d be a good idea to spend money on just a place to sit and the opportunity to get some food there, but my husband really wanted to try it. Luckily, we found a great place to sit inside, got some really nice food (had quite a few vegan options too), had a few iced teas and cokes, and just chilled there for a good 3 hours or so. It was really worth it, paying for this lounge, I have got to give it to my husband. (And we haven’t even used all the available facilities like the kids’/sleeping/Skype/prayer rooms or the billiard or the piano.)

However, as it is past 4pm at home (and 5pm here), and we are about to head to our gates, I am starting to feel the effects of the past few hectic days and the lack of sleep. I am really hoping to get some sleep on the flight to Ulaanbaatar – it’s gonna be many hours anyway, and we’ll arrive in the morning (Mongolian time) so we might as well try to start and accommodate our bodies to the time difference. We’ll see how it goes.

Fun fact: I’ve also come across the first squat toilet in my life here at Istanbul Airport. Didn’t use it – they had normal ones too, luckily – but I’d never even seen one before.

IST - UBN

We ended up not sleeping on the plane at all. It was really hot (they had probably made it hot so that people would sleep but we found it way too hot for it – surprised anyone could manage to fall asleep tbh) and the seats weren’t uncomfortable but in an upright position they didn’t really provide us enough comfort for dozing off either. Some people did recline their seats but I thought that would be rude to the person sitting behind me – and some others simply wandered to the back of the plane where there were quite a few empty seats and laid across the 4 middle seats to sleep properly lying down. It was also pretty loud next to the window and the plane was old and – to be frank – quite smelly; not saying I was surprised, as most people on the plane, including us, had been travelling for some time by then and had gotten quite sweaty and travel-smelly. Still, it was just 8 hours of suffering and not sleeping – I’d tried it at first, falling asleep in a dozen slightly different positions, but once I gave up we started watching Agent Carter and The Mentalist on the in-flight entertainment system (the tablets here were definitely lame, especially compared to the ones on our first Turkish flight) and that was better.

Had to keep watching HP1 too, before we moved on to TV shows instead.

The biggest plane I've ever been on - had 8 seats in a row.

They also gave us dinner and breakfast during the flight and those were again pretty good – and vegan for me. It’s just that I was so exhausted and miserable by this point that I could barely enjoy it.

Vegan dinner on the IST-UBN flight

Vegan beakfast on the IST-UBN flight

Once we landed (after having watched the quite beautiful and unique view of the Mongolian mountains in the sunrise for a good ten minutes), we went through passport control; a pain in the ass if I’ve ever seen one, as they seemed to have some problems with our visas and sent us back (after a good half an hour of queuing) where they made us wait a few minutes and then someone came out and took us back to the passport control windows and told us our visas were fine, after all, but they also wanted to know our Mongolian address which we simply couldn’t give them since we didn’t have one yet, and such. Still, ended up being let into the country, and also got our luggage back completely and properly, no suitcases missing, luckily.

The Mongolian mountains in the early morning light - quite a view.

The hazy first day

Then we met Munkh, my head of department here (although he keeps referring to himself as ‘dean’ so that might be what they use here) and waited some more in line for our Mongolian SIM cards. When I’ve finally gotten those, Munkh drove us to the teachers’ apartment building (about 2 hours of driving, thanks to the insane traffic, even though the airport is not that far away) and dropped us off at the university parking lot where a student met us and took us to our floor in the apartment building. She spoke no English but at least she showed us where we would live.

After chucking all our bags on the floor and sofa, we took a quick shower (without shower gel as we hadn’t brought any, not wanting to have too heavy bags/a broken shower gel bottle that drowns all our stuff in soap) and – agreeing with the diplomat that we would meet them in 3 hours’ time – went straight to bed, falling asleep promptly.

Evergreens are not actually ever-green here - they also get autumn-coloured, for some reason!

After about two and hours of sleep, groggy and still exhausted, we made our way to the Embassy of Hungary here in Ulaanbaatar and met the guys working there and two ladies and the ambassador herself as well. We chatted for almost two hours before taking off for a quick trip to the closest grocery store to get some essentials (like shower gel and some food and water, as tap water is not drinkable here) and coming back to the apartment. The embassy guys had also invited us to have dinner with them but we weren’t hungry at all, only super exhausted, so we declined and worked on our laptops instead for some time before taking another (this time proper) shower and going to bed at around 8pm in hopes of a good night’s sleep.

The view from our apartment - pretty cool, eh?