Travel to Mongolia

We arrived at the Perth airport on time to have to re pack our hand luggage as it was a couple kilos over the 7kg limit. Then we had to pay a small fortune for our excess luggage, we expected this. The lady suggested that we send the extra bags as unaccompanied luggage but with our past experience that never turns out the best so I handed over my visa card and paid. Our first stop was Singapore for a short two hour stop over and then we headed to Beijing where it got a bit interesting.
For those people who have never traveled through Beijing you are very lucky. I am sure if we were stopping in Beijing it would have been straight forward but as a transit passenger it seems the Chinese systems has gone mad.

I am so glad we got a taste for what was ahead from our last visit to Mongolia so we had most of the paper work filled out ahead of time. We got off the plane and headed to the transit desk as you would usually do at any other airport in the world. At the transit desk we presented our tickets for the Mongolian flight where we got told that we had to go to the immigration desk to exit the airport terminal to re check in as we were not traveling with Air China. We then headed to the new location and had to go through a heath check station where we handed in our heath form, we must have looked healthy as our temperatures where not checked so we were clear to proceed to immigration.
Standing in the line we had to make sure that we had our arrival card, departure card, customs forms all filled in with our tickets, passports and letter of invitation ready for stamping. After proceeding past this point we had to proceed to the check in counter but couldn't do so until closer to our flight time. We then headed to a small cafe which we had found on our last trip through the airport.
If you ever do go to Beijing always leave yourselves plenty of time to check in as it can take up to two hours to reach the boarding gate as there are so many lines you have to go though to get in.
Once we headed to Air Mongolia check in we had to wait until the counter opened for our flight as they were only accepting one flight at a time. By the time we were able to check in we had one Mongolian push in front of us and others trying to do the same so we put a stop to that with Ben standing in front of the peoples trolleys.
We then made our way to the immigration check where once again it took us some time in a line. We handed over our customs form for leaving the country and passports to be stamped, then we went through the security check and another passport viewing section. Then we headed to the gate so I think it took us a good two to three hours from start to finish getting to the departure gate.
The flight went well except Mongolian Air planes don’t seem to have much leg room so it was a little squashy. Ben has the luck of sitting next to a very large Mongolian lady.

Once we landed in Mongolia getting our visa "on arrival" went well, no problems except more forms. We collected our bags and then realised that there was no one to greet us. We didn't worry to much as we thought maybe they where running late so we stepped over to some seats to wait. By then we had a number of people milling around us who turned out to be taxi drivers. This made us a little uneasy as they were only standing a meter away from us. I don’t think Mongolians have heard of personal space. After waiting for about 15 minutes we saw a friendly face enter the building. Steve the HR manager decided to call in to the airport to see if we had arrived. Turns out that the drivers who where meant to pick us up were under the impression that our plane had been delayed. Steve arranged taxis to take our bags to the hotel, Ben went in one of the taxis and Paige and I went with Steve. I think I will call Steve “Super Steve” as I was so glad he came to check on us as I did not want to think how much longer we would have had to

wait.

We arrived at the hotel safely, Ben had an interesting drive with the taxi driver (seat belts optional). We unloaded the cars and the poor door man took one look at our bags and kept a straight face, I am sure inside he was saying something in Mongolian about these crazy westerners with bags. Ben and Super Steve checked the hotel room to make sure everything was in order so by about 1am our heads hit the pillows to some well deserved sleep.

For those wondering how Paige went on the trip over she only had a couple of melt downs along the way so she received some well deserved chocolate for putting up with her parents moving again.

This is another exciting chapter in our lives and we look forward to exploring Mongolia and meeting new people and making new friends.Until next time, buy for now.

Bernadette

Photos: 1. Bernadette & Paige standing next to ice sculptures 2. Paige happy in the cold weather