Wednesday, May 14, 2014
We have internet – obviously 😉
The drive to the Chinese border town of Erenhot was fast and smooth: we were on the road by 8am and arrived around 1pm, just in time for lunch. We all relaxed and did some last organizing on the cars before our ‘last supper in China.’ And what a dinner it was! Our guide Lun treated us to a fabulous meal at a hotpot restaurant and we all enjoyed a lot of very good food.
We stayed in the ‘Pacific International Hotel’.
At the beginning of the China crossing we were a ‘little’ apprehensive of not only having to travel with others, but also with an official guide. We could now honestly say that it all worked out very well: the group dynamic was good and we couldn’t have had a better guide than Lun. After settling up with Lun, the 6 of us ventured out to find a couple of more beers and a good night was had by all. We did wrap it up around midnight as we all realized that the next day was fairly important, with crossing a few borders and all that.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Today we crossed the border out of China and into Mongolia. It was quite painless, especially the Chinese side. We had the luxury of a late start as Lun told us we had to be ready to leave the hotel by 10am. We were all excited to be heading into Mongolia and of course we were all ready on time. We had one chore to complete prior to 10, which was to fill up 2 of our 4 Jerry cans. We had read in our guidebook that it is not always easy to get the right type of fuel in Mongolia. And although these reports maybe somewhat dated, we didn’t want to take any chances.
At 10am on the dot Lun appeared and directed us to our vehicles and onto the border, which was only a few kilometers away. In less than an hour we and Sterlin had successfully exited China. Lun stayed with us right up to the very end to make sure everything went smoothly. Which it did. Lun was the most wonderful guide and we thanked him heartily before we drove towards Mongolia.
Entering Mongolia involved a more hands-on approach and considerably more shuffling of paper. We stayed together as a group and were able to assist each other through the process. Basically we collected a white piece of paper from one place, filled it out, handed it to a variety of people for a variety of reasons, who stamped it and handed it back so we could finally hand it to the people controlling the exit barrier. The whole exit/entry process was completed in less than 2 hours. All of the officials were friendly and spoke just enough English to make the process quite painless.
It was wonderful to be in Mongolia. We headed straight for the supermarket in hopes of finding cheese and salami.
