Mongolia
Just over 11 hours later, my 2MM flight on United wrapped up with a smooth landing at Incheon International Airport (ICN) outside of Seoul. We wrapped up an indifferent breakfast, had a celebratory group photo with the crew, and Fazal managed to score a pair of pilots' wings (!) from one of the pilots (Captain Ben, I think it was) who's retiring soon. Said farewell to Erick and his Dad as well, as they (and Dan) were staying in Seoul; was great that they could come.
Korean food for breakfast at Amoje is always good, although the beef rib noodle soup didn't look as good as the broiled mackerel, then it was time for the short flight from South Korea to Mongolia. Korean Air fills up an Airbus A330-300 daily on ICN-UBN, and their bulkhead row in economy is pretty spacious. Food is nothing special, but hard to complain too much about bibimbap for lunch-- and was far less of a struggle deciding than smorgasbord of choices for breakfast at the airport that morning.
Arrival in Ulaanbaatar was smooth, and the taxi ride remains lengthy, at nearly an hour. Urban sprawl becomes apparent about 20 minutes out from the city center, with tons of new apartment buildings up, and, oddly, what looks like food trucks lining the highway on the way in. Philip made a great choice in hotels with the Best Western, and then it was time for a quick stroll of the city center. Ran into Sue, Alice, and Trevor as they wrapped up their own exploring of what is a large and modern city that clearly sits at the crossroads of the old Soviet-era and Asia.
It's hard to say anything we saw outside of Sukhbaatar Square and Parliament itself to be particularly memorable, but the urban environment was sort of the goal, so that's what we did before dinner.