China post # 12 - On to Mongolia

Well, we took off from Ulan Bataar with a lot of cash and a little trepidation as our Trans-siberian handbook had alerted us to a scam by Russian customs officials on the Mongolian border that stuck to the strict letter of the law regarding how much cash you could take out of the Russian Federation. Basically, if you didn't have a customs declaration form saying how much cash you had arrived in Russia with then they could confiscate all your Euros, Dollars, roubles whatever, even though the official limit is like 3000$! Our fears were not alleviated by a Canadian tour guide who had been through a few weeks previousily and the customs had efficiently cleaned the train out of 2 or 3000 dollars from tourists .... bugger! She had the whole train on edge as nobody had the CDF - we had tried in SP airport, but nobody wanted to know us. Anyhow the 2 dutch boys in our carriage didn't seem too worried and we spent the night drinking vodka, while Agnes was deep in thought thinking where she could hide our booty: even though she had about 83$ and I had about 1300$.

Next day I stuffed the money in a pair of smelly socks and Agnes managed to fit about a 150 bucks in her bra (luckily I had large bills ;-)) . We had to disembark for 3 hours before the bureaucracy started and Agnes was hyper for most of that time, I had to bring her for ice-cream in the end. When off the train we realised that it was only 3 carriages full of tourists, this was very bad because normally the customs have their hands full checking the Mongolian traders.
In the end it was the usual anti-climax (thank God) and female customs officers boarded the train (so much for the bra stash, didn't matter as Agnes was having a nap at this stage) and stamped all the forms and we were on our way over the mongolian border after only an 8 hour wait.

Finally Mongolia ... the land of Genghis Khan (spelled Chingiss here) and after another couple of hours of border bullshit it was on to our first real stop where everyone looked really asian and had big smiles on their faces. We even buy some mongolian vodka which is called .... yes you've guessed it Chingiss Khan!

We arrive at Ulan Bataar at 7 a.m. the next morn and we're greeted by our guide, the bouncy, friendly and smiley Kho, who, despite the hour, is all ready to give us our prepaid tour of UB. This turns out to be quite enjoyable as it's a beautiful day, not too hot yet and there is nobody around. So we see a soviet type monument, the main square and clock up our first temple - yeah! Kho, a 21 year old student of pharmacy, turns out to be a real little star and while ferrying us around manages to book us flights to the north and accommodation too - bless her! She even takes us to a supermarket so that we can stock up on essential alcoholic supplies before heading out to the wilds and ..... I buy my first bottle of mongolian whisky ....