Sorry for the Group Email

LOCATION: Fair. About twenty minutes’ walk from the centre of town. Not that there’s loads to do once you get there.

INTERNET: No. The post office, about ten minutes’ walk, has splendidly fast and cheap internet, though. We got a few hours for the equivalent of about 90p.

KITCHEN: No.

CLEAN? Kind of. The bed clothes were, at least.

TOWELS? Yes. Threadbare, horrible old things, but towels nonetheless.

TV? Yes. A baffling number of channels, many of them showing suspiciously new films. Every now and then you’ll see an anti-piracy warning.

SECURE? Here’s a story about our stay. I was in reception, behaving like a good tourist and bitching about the cold in our room. While I waited for them to rustle up a pre-historic heater and some scratchy blankets, a woman came into reception. Wearing a halter top, high-heels and a denim mini-skirt, she collected a pair of men that had been waiting in the lobby. There are condom machines on the wall. The hotel, it seems, is less hotel than it is rent-by-the-hour knocking shop. Nothing of ours went missing while we were there, but you have to ask yourself how secure a hotel can be when it has that much, um, foot traffic.

FRIENDLY? Surprisingly, yes.

WARM? Not on the fourth floor. Elsewhere yes.

COMFORTABLE? Reasonably. Noisy more or less all the time. And if the thought of spending the night in the same building as prostitutes makes you uncomfortable, this isn’t for you.

ENGLISH SPOKEN? Yes. Enough to get by.

BREAKFAST? No. The City Nomad Bar and Grill is in the same building, though, which offers great food for next to nothing.

VERDICT: A place to stay and not much more. If you’re stuck in Ulan Batar and honestly can’t find anywhere else to go, you may as well rest your head here. Just don’t think about whose head (and how many, and what they were doing, etc.) was there before. The real question, of course, is what is a reputable tour group like Sundowners doing sending groups here?