Diplomat: H.E. Tugsbilguun Tumurkhuleg
100th interview BigChilli with Diplomats
Mongolian Ambassador puts cooperationat the top of his agenda Words MAXMILIAN WECHSLER
His Excellency Tugsbilguun Tumurkhuleg began his term as Mongolian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Thailand in August 2015. He’s one of the younger members of the Bangkok diplomatic corps and may be the only member who has studied formally at a Thai university. His father, also a career diplomat, ser ved as Mongolian ambassador to Laos in the mid-1990s. The younger Tumurkhuleg lived with his family at the Mongolian Embassy in Vientiane most of that time, but came to Bangkok when he was 20 after he was accepted for a fellowship at Srinakharinwirot University. He studied the Thai language there in1994-1995. This is his first ambassadorial assignment, and he’s also accredited as ambassador to Malaysia and Myanmar, as well as Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). As his term is coming to an end sometime this year, the ambassador was happy to sit down with The BigChilli for this inter view. Background Ambassador Tugsbilguun Tumurkhuleg was born in February 1974 in the Algerian capital of Algiers, where his father was posted at the Mongolian Embassy. “I don’t have Algerian nationality, however. Three months after I was born we went back to Mongolia. We returned to Algeria when I was five, and stayed there until I was eight. My father is fluent in French and therefore was mostly posted to French-speaking countries. He was posted twice in Algeria as attaché and then as second and first secretary. He served once in France as counselor and was an ambassador to Laos. “I visited Thailand for the first time in 1991. I was on the
way to meet my parents in Laos and I stopped in Bangkok, spent a few days here and continued on to Vientiane. My father was a Mongolian ambassador to Laos from 1991 to 1996 and he also had responsibility for Thailand and Cambodia. For most of that time I stayed with my parents in Laos. I became very interested in Southeast Asia and Thailand in particular. That’s why I applied for a fellowship at Srinakharinwirot University, and I was very happy to be accepted.” This is Mr Tugsbilguun’s second posting in Bangkok. He served as attaché at the Mongolian embassy here from 2004 to 2007. Just 46 years old, the ambassador has held several other important positions since joining the Mongolian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in 1999 (see CV).
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