Sunday, October 5, 2008

In Ulaanbaatar

We are finally in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia after 5 days in the train. The 5 days went faster that i thought they would even thou we didn't do much during the days. We just relaxed and played with cards or read or just enjoyed the landscape outside. We shared cabin with a Swedish lady that was a guide for a group of 16 swedes that filled our most of our carriage, there were to German in our carriage as well. We also met some other Swedish people in our own age.
 
We stopped around every 4 hours and at the stops we could get out to stretch our legs and buy some of the things they where selling at the station, mostly food. The stops didn't last longer that around 20 minutes so we couldn't walk far before our Chinese hosts called us back to get on the train. The train was a Chinese with Chinese personal working except the restaurant which was Russian. The restaurant didn't look to clean and was fairly expensive so we didn't eat there.
 
Yesterday we crossed the border to Mongolia and it took around 7 hours to clear customs and everything on both sides, most of that time was spent on the Russian side. The Russians wast really smooth, first they had to collect all the passports and it took 4 hours before we got them back. They also had to search the cabin for smuggle goods and drugs, luckily for us they didn't find anything.
 
Right now we are sitting at an Internet cafe in Ulaanbaatar, the city isn't exactly beautiful it looks like a old soviet city. We hope we can spend a night out on the countryside which is supposed to be beautiful.

No comments: