TRAVELOGUE #6

When: Saturday, June 17
Where: Beijing, China to Mongolian Boarder

Boarders, ick. Not only are they a pain in the ass to cross, they also represent ownership of land. This does not interest me. Anyways we arrived at the China - Mongolian boarder around 9 PM where our passports were stamped by the Chinese. Once we were official, all the foreigners lined up along window of the car frothing at the small, but well stocked grocery store at the station. I worked my mad Chinese language skills and learned that we could get off the train if we wished, since we weren’t going to depart until 11 PM. We rushed off and mobbed the store. I bought some dried mangoes, green raisins and three Choc-O-Pies for my bunkmates. Suddenly, while standing in line I saw the train pulling away from the station. The foreigners in the store glanced anxiously at one another as if to say, “Was that supposed to happen?” I went outside and talked to a Chinese lady in uniform. She said the train would be back around 11 PM after the wheels have been swapped - apparently Mongolia’s train tracks have a different gauge than China’s. At 130 AM, two hours later than expected, the train returns. In the mean time I paced the concrete platform a couple times while listening to really bad 80s muzak and then chatted with some nice college kids from North Carolina.

When I got back on the train, we moved about 200 meters before the Mongolian boarder patrol came on. A woman in a very starched uniform came into our cabin and saluted before viewing our passports, and that was it. It took over 5 hours to cross 200 meters. And the toilets were locked the whole time because all of the waste gets flushed directly onto the tracks so we were forced to hold our water like a herd of camels.