8th July 1992 Day 354

The Diary

Tickets stamped 4 times, bags weighed and a fight through the crowds outside the station. The platform was peaceful & orderly and I climbed aboard the 7:40am Beijing - Ulan Bator - Moscow international express. Only 2 room-mates. Andrei Protapopov (honestly) a Russian studying Chinese in Beijing, who had an English girlfriend, read Viz and was smuggling porn back to Novosibirsk and Mr Liu a Chinaman who was going to Hungary to compete in a computer game competition and was accompanied by 27 bottles of Chinese beer & enough food to get him there and back. 

Mr Lui

Andrei also spoke English and had a few friends in the next carriage where Ken & Debbie and the Western hordes were. The day passed quickly - I talked to Andrei, made signs to Mr Lui, Ken brought Mark & Tony the drunken Hong Kong jockeys along to keep me amused, a couple of journeys to the restaurant car at the far end of the train took up several hours due to the number of doors that had to be opened & closed on the way, I talked to Trevor & Carolyn in their deluxe 2-berth cabin, I got stuck in to the Grapes of Wrath and suddenly we were at Erlian (or Erenhot) at the Chinese border around 9pm local time. 

Passports were collected, forms filled in & the train was taken away to have its wheels changed. Andrei helped us spend our last few Yuan on sausages, biscuits & pot noodles & we re-boarded the train. The train trundled across the border and we went through the immigration process again, health forms, customs forms, passport check etc. We arrived at Erlian on time but after we got going again, 7 1/2 hours later we were about 4 hours late and very tired.