Arrival Mongolia

Our first leg of the trans siberian was a cold one. the compartments are 4-berth and have a door but they are no more comfortable than the chinese trains. after not much sleep the night before dur the eary wake we spent off the day sleeping, which actually on a train like that, especially when the views outside are shit (it was our worst day weather-wise since we had arrived in china, and northern china near the mongolian border is a shithole anyway...). it was soooo cold as well, thge 2 sheets and blanket provided werent enough. the worst part about the train ride was the border crossing which took a total of 5 hours. The chinese one took longer but the mongolian one was at 2 in the morning so i dont know whcih one i liked least. what was good which i was getting worried about was that they would go through my bags and find my piece of the great wall (apparently your not aloud to steal bits of national monuments).

When we woke up teh next day we found ourselves in a completely different landscape, dominated by browns and oranges. and barely anything to be seen for miles. we were in mongolia alright. we were supposedly 4 hours behind schedule but i saw a growing number of concrete houses approaching so i was like to pierre, i think we're here, and he's like no we're too early but secretly starts packing away. slowly but surely we pull into a station in the middle of a city and pierre's like 'this cant be ulaanbataar' ULAANBATAAR!' the conductor calls out almost immediately but he doesnt care he's packed, ive got all my shit evrywhere so i just put it into one big bundle and and packed up on the platform - didnt even loose anything. the people who owned the hostel we were to stay at came and picked us up from the station along with the other 20 or so people on the train who were also staying there. as soon as we arrived th ehostel owner kim started selling one of his tours and tried to get out to go the next day but we all wanted to chill out and decided to go the day after. that night we went to the pub with a few people that we'd met in beijing, steve a 'large set smoker' from canada and paul (some guy from morecombe, and the guys who we planned to go the gobi with (steve is included in said group as well). from first impressions they all seemed like pretty cool guys and i that impression didnt really change that much.

the next day me and pierre wandered around the town visiting the parliament building and the main square. we got our food supllies for the desert (much of which we still have left because bobby, the lady from the hostel exaggerated the lack of quality and under-abundance of food in the desert, we're still eating from it now, 6 days after returning) i also bought some gloves and tights. that night we went for one last good meal in the local irish pub which serves delicious food, and had a relitevly early night before we went to the gobi the following morning.