There are number of quality tailors in and around UB offering a good service at very good prices. You can generally buy your own material and take it with you or have them supply it for you. Depending on what your requirements are you can have a three piece suit made to measure for as little as 20,000 Tugrug and to a pretty high standard in almost any material available.

There a few photography outlets in UB although they’re a little thin on the ground as far as range and quality are concerned. The MCS plaza building, located on Seoul Street, is now stocking a few Canon products although digital SLR’s are hard to come by, alot of the compact cameras available are over priced and a little grey as well.

Mercury Mart is an indoor food market, situated behind the Brauhaus just off Seoul street. This is the best place to go for cheap fruit and vegetables. At the entrance of the market, there’s a well stocked beer and spirits shop selling everything and anything you could be looking for.

There are plenty of food markets with fresh produce and other goods. Many smaller shops in Mongolia still don't have a supermarket style experience and you are forced to point and ask for goods from the shopkeeper.

Located at the end of Juulchin street, near Gandan Monastery this is a large busy market where you can buy all sorts of food and clothing. It’s situated just off Tumurchny Street in the Chingeltei District, it acts as a stand in to the Gal market which burnt down a few years ago. The first floor contains the fresh product market where you can buy all the standard fare from fruit to Mongolian sour cream.

It is not difficult to rent an apartment in Ulaanbaatar, provided that you can speak Mongolian. To solve the problem, one must obtain the services of a really good, honest, outgoing, translator. To find an apartment upon arrival in Ulaanbaatar one has to plan and organize in a systematic manner to avoid pitfalls.

If you want to stay here and the company you work for won’t find you a place then it’s quite easy to rent an apartment yourself…providing you have made friends with a Mongolian speaker. If not then you can look on the notice boards of expat pubs and bars, hostels and in the two English lang. newspapers, The UB Post and Mongol Messenger which have listings every week.

There are numerous photo printing facilities around Ulaanbaatar. The best are just behind the buildings on the east side of Sukhbaatar Square – the Kodak and Fuji film signs make it apparent where they are. The prices are reasonable and cheap and you can take in your digital flash cards, USB sticks, CD’s etc and get whatever shots you want printed.

Mobile telephones are among the top five most popular travelling items taken overseas, and are a convenient way of staying in touch with your family and friends back home.

Unfortunately i didn’t get to visit the children's palace over the summer and it’s now closed for the winter. although looking through the fences at the, very Soviet rides, I’d visit this place just for the novelty value.