A Bite and a half.....

August 29th 2017

After waking up a 7.30am, I felt rather itchy and a bit narky; it appears I was "eaten alive" the previous day. Between us, we have around 30 mosquito bites (please note, I have about 20 of them!) And before you ask, yes I did use insect repellent, just not everywhere!

But as they say, the show must go on....we headed for our last Chinese breakfast before embarking on the first leg of the journey to Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia. 

We checked out of the hotel around 9.30am intent on going to the local supermarket to stock up on the necessary goodies. I waited outside while Iain stocked up on noodles, noodles and more noodles.....there were also a few bottles of water, Sprite and Pepsi to keep us going.

As I mentioned previously, our hotel was just a stones throw from Beijing Central Station; this came in really handy for check-in. It is only possible to get into the station with a ticket, so this meant a ticket and passport check before we were even allowed passed the first set of barriers. That was followed by a baggage security check and then we had to stand on what looked like scales and a metal detector was brushed over us.

There is a gigantic board in the centre of the station, thankfully our ticket (which had been delivered to our hotel), stated which train we were looking for - K23. All trains go by a number, and time of departure depends on the country of departure. For Beijing, it is quoted in china time (GMT +7), Mongolia is Mongolian time (GMT +7) but Russian, no matter where you are, goes on Moscow time (GMT +5). Easy once you get the hang of it!

Anyway, we managed to find the platform....it was pretty much the only place we had seen loads of foreigners! We all "queued" at platform 807; I say queued, the British and Aussies queued, everyone else rushed to the front like their lives depended on it! After we got through the next ticket check, we had to find our carriage and our berth for the next 27ish hours.; that was the easy part!


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