Traveling in Inner Mongolia, need recommendations for a driver!

[grawrt]

Hi guys, me and three other classmates of mine are planning a trip to Inner Mongolia and were looking into getting a guide/driver for hulunbeier, starting out of Hailar.

 

Do you guys have any recommendations for any good guides/drivers, or where we can look for one? Our chinese is passable, so English isn't a requirement for a driver. We're really interested in seeing the grasslands and hiking.

 

Thanks!

[grawrt]

Okay, Just wanted to update even though no one responded.

We ended up taking a Chinese Tour out to the Hulunbeir grasslands. Word of advice? Avoid at all costs. I'm not going to get too much into detail since it derails from the original topic (unless anyone is interested), but lets just say it was suuuuch a scam. The first day they took us from Hailer to Manzhouli (honestly not sure why we didn't just get off the train at Manzhouli). Manzhouli basically has nothing of interest if you're interested in natural scenery and hiking. We were so traumatized by the first day of the trip that we ended up ditching the chinese tour and hiring a private driver for the next day.

He was really great and sweet to help us so last minute. At first we were skeptical because later on he added an extra 300 RMB to the originally negotiated price. Fearing that he might add even more costs later on we told him flat out that unless he agreed to the originally negotiated price of 1000 we just weren't interested. We had already paid enough on this crap chinese tour and we were all students. He agreed to it. But he turned out to be an honest guy. We ended up tipping him 200.

If anyone is interested his English name is David Xu. He speaks english really well, and is a local. He really knows about the areas and told us a lot on the car ride. Even though the area we were stuck in kind of sucked and had nothing to do, he was nice enough to take us to the places we wanted (go out hiking on the gorgeous grasslands, have tea with the local people and chat, take pictures, visit a fresh spring, etc.) Before we had to board our train he took us to a great little hotpot place which was really good. I'll just say lamb & beef is just sooo good in Inner Mongolia. On our previous stop we ate some shaokao that was also so good. I don't really like eating meat usually but it was unforgettable. He wanted to take us to a tea place after we ate but we didn't have enough time. While we were on the train, he ran over to the tea place got some tea and handed it to one of the people on the train to give to us. It was very sweet of him and we all didn't expect it.

Here is his contact where we found him:
http://www.doyouhike.net/huangye/p/51029.html

There are other local drivers there too but he seems to be the only one who speaks english in the area we were interested in. Previously I had found a few that offered slightly lower prices, for instance I think I found a 600 kuai/day driver but he seemed a bit sketchy because later when my teacher spoke with him he raised his price to 1200.

If anyone is interested in a trip to Mongolia I highly recommend finding your own driver, if not online then you could also try paying some taxis to take you out. They're more than willing to, we had actually asked around although I'm not sure how much they charge.