The day in limbo!

After a delightfully restful night in the departures terminal (seriously very comfortable! Perfect except for the announcements every 30 minutes, but after I was asleep, they no longer bothered me!), I headed to the check-in counter at 6am, as my Air China flight was departing at 8. However, upon arriving at the departure gate, a little sign written on paper said that the flight was delayed from 8am to 8 pm due to "bad weather". Apparently Beijing airport has been doing this a lot recently, even when there was no bad weather anywhere in the vicinity! Anyway, since I had some time to kill, I started chatting with some of the other people waiting around. This is how I met Ariell, Deidra and Tina. Then our luck suddenly turned for the better; Air China announced to us that they booked a hotel in Beijing that we could stay at for the day! So, with my new acquaintances, we left in the provided shuttle buses to the hotel, where they treated us to a really nice (and free!!!) Chinese lunch. After that, Deidra and I decided to do some shopping! Having been here before, Deidra suggested a department store for starters. Although we ended up at a more upscale department store at first, on our second try we succeeded in reaching our intended destination: the rip-off market (Ya-Show to be more accurate). Very interesting place for the bargain seeker, as long as you are willing to negotiate ferociously! After that little adventure, we opted to return to the (air conditioned) hotel for a little nap before dinner. So, all in all, we spent a very nice day in Beijing!

At 6:30, we left the hotel to return to the airport. We first had to check in again, but a small error was made; the first to check in had the wrong gate number on their boarding passes! Well, because of this and other lacks of organization on the airport's part, we only ended up leaving at 10:30pm and arriving about 1:00 in Mongolia.

I like how China insinuates that Taiwan is part of China
and therefore doesn't include it under "international"!


The check in line at 8:00.


Deidra, Ariell, Tina and I.

Although Chinggis Khan Airport is very small (especially in contrast to Beijing's giant structure), the service was very efficient. Once I cleared immigration, I proceeded to take a taxi to Oyuna's guesthouse. After knocking on the erm.... wall? door? (I'm still not sure what it is, but I'll post a picture at one point... ) Oyuna and Gaan, the guesthouse's owners, opened-up and greeted me as if it were a decent hour (which it really wasn't at this point). They apologized for not picking me up at the airport, which is definitely understandable since my flight was delayed for 12 hours, and then showed me to my bed with all courtesy. After a brief information session, which taught me all I needed to know about the facilities, I then (finally) went to bed.