25 June
Day 212: Beijing
We left together with Luis, who was going to work, at 9 am and went straight to Mongolian embassy. No invitation, no special papers are needed for the visa, just pay 550 Yuan (around 60 euro) and it will be ready in 24 hours :-D
As a next step we needed to buy a ticket to Ulaanbaatar.
There are two ways to get to UB from Beijing:
1. The most expensive way is to take trans Mongolian train, directly from Beijing to UB for 1000 Yuan (110 euro) per person.
2. The cheapest way is to take a local train from Beijing to Erlian, then cross the border by jeep to Zamin Ud on Mongolian side and from Zamin Ud take a local train to UB – all this has to cost more or less around 250 Yuan (25 euro) per person.
We obviously decided to go the cheap way and to buy a ticket for the local train to Erlian.
First we went to the International Hotel (which was on Lonely planet), where we supposed to find the tickets.
The girl from the office told me these tickets are expensive ones and if we want a cheap one, we need to go to Beijing Railway station.
I asked her to write me down in Chinese – we need two tickets to Erlian on 30 of June, hard sleeper, low seats. She agreed and also wrote me the name of the ticket window at the station to go ask for these tickets. It was cashier number 1, at Beijing Railway station – Directors window (who was speaking some English :-D
At that window we finally got our tickets to Erlian, 140 Yuan each (around 15 euros).
Later we contacted Fan Yuan, a girl from Couchsurfing Juli was in touch with and met with her for lunch. Such a nice lady she was, talkative and sweet. We had a lunch in a very nice restaurant and then went to the old part of the town, to walk along Beijing’s Hutongs.
Fan had to run meet with her friends, we said good bye to her and later met Luis and couple of his friends (Bea, Quico, who came to visit Bea from Valencia and Laura) for Pekin duck dinner.
After dinner, we saw Spain – Chile match in one of the bars with a big screen outside.
Spain won 2:1 and we were very happy, since Spain was going to continue in the World cup and next match was against Portugal :-D
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