I'm sitting on the Air China flight, returning from Ulaanbaator to Beijing after being unable to land due to bad weather, so I thought I might as well start a daily log. It's now 6 May so I'll write retrospectively for 5 May.

This morning started out very early. I got up at 4 am after only a few hours of sleep from packing the night before. I was going to take the train down to Sydney airport but Michelle said she could drive me instead. It was really nice to ride down with her since it'll be a full month before I see her again. So here I am at the airport three hours early and got through check-in smoothly. There was some confusion at the counter as to whether or not I needed a Mongolian visa but I assured them that I had double checked and I'm allowed 90 days automatically with my US Passport. They didn't want to believe me but after a few minutes of phone calls an double-check, they let me through. As I was reaching for my passport, I realized I had left my drivers license and bank card at home from dinner the night before. This wasn't too bad because I had my passport and I had plenty of other cards available. I'll just need to sort out how to transfer money around so I can access it in Mongolia.

I grabbed a quick Subway sandwich and a coffee from Krispy Kreme (avoided the donuts though!) in defiance of McDonalds. Michelle and I have sworn we're staying away from since we saw a big lump of snot inadvertently fall into a coffee being made at the McCafe and then get server to a customer. EEEeeeeewwwww!

Now that I had my coffee fix for the morning, I went to the TravelEx counter to get some Mongolian money. I was told that this was a specialty item, and that I should get this using Australian dollars once in Beijing instead.

I then went through to the tourist refund counter and got a GST refund on the laptop I'm typing this on. The lady at JB Hi-Fi told me that any purchase over $300 is eligible for GST refund if purchased within 30 days of departure from Australia. Thanks!!

After perusing the endless duty-free shops, I made my way to the gate and picked up a few dirt bike magazines to read on the way. One of the magazines talked about the Watagans Trail Bike Tour that I did a few weeks ago and it got great reviews. I'm not surprised because the motorbike skills day was fantastic - well planned, fun, and great people! Hopefully my brother in law Adam can make it up to do that ride one of these days.

The flight to Beijing was fine, except that I realized at the last minute I hadn't ordered any vegetarian meals. I was able to order these for later flights but today I'd have to make do with what was on offer - turned out it was two bread rolls and a funny looking slice of cake for the 8 hour flight. As we approached the airport, I heard them say "Shanghai" mixed in with a bunch of Chinese (and unintelligible English translations) over the speaker. I looked at out arrival time and saw we were a bit early, and then it occurred to me that this wasn't a direct flight. Nowhere did I ever read anything about a stopover. Oh well. So we all deplaned. We all had to go through customs and immigration and then re-board the same plane. Immigration seemed to have a hard time knowing what to do with me since I was technically staying in China overnight even though it was just for transit purposes. I didn't have a Chinese visa so they issued me a temporary 1 day visa on the spot to allow me to continue my flight to Beijing, and eventually to Ulaanbaatar.

After following a series of about eight signs indicating which way we were to meander through the airport in order to successfully get back to the plane, we all re-boarded and were once again on our way.

The three hour flight to Beijing was smooth and a local Beijing beer hit the spot. It's a light beer similar to Tooheys New or Heineken, but with a bit of tang. After getting off at Beijing, I cruised through customs and immigration without any problems, and they were friendly and helpful. I went to baggage claim as indicated on the electronic boards and waited for my luggage and a few bags were spit out onto the conveyor track but mine didn't arrive. Exhausted and hungry, this wasn't what I needed. I tried to find someone who spoke any English but no one did. I just kept showing my baggage claim ticket to the airport officials and finally one of them pointed me out the exit and then pointed the way down an immense hallway of new Terminal 3, specially built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After a few minutes of walking, there were no further signs indicating anything about baggage so I showed my baggage claim ticket to yet another random, non-English speaking official and he pointed me through a door to another section isolated from the rest of the airport. There were about a dozen more conveyor belts but none were running. I looked around each of them until I finally found a lone backpack sitting at the far end of one of them - yeah!!

So I gathered my bag and decided I should get some Mongolian and perhaps a little Chinese money. Fortunately I found a Travelex right next to the baggage claim and quickly figured out that 6 RMB is equal to 1 Australian dollar. Coffees (cappuccinos) here cost about 20-30 RMB, which is about $3.50-$5.00 - the same as Sydney. However I noted that the "service fee" was 50 RMB, or about $8.50. I decided to cash in $50 and take the hit on the near 20% fee, but I really didn't need any more Chinese money than that since I'm just passing through for the night. Unfortunately, they didn't dispense anything other than RMB so I will have to wait until Mongolia to get local currency. I sure hope there are working ATMs at Ulaanbaatar!

I then needed to find my way to the hotel. I had a voucher for a nearby hotel, including ground transport, but was given no other information It's now 11:30 pm local time and I'm exhausted. I went to the information counter and showed them the voucher. They wrote down a number on a piece of paper and pointed me towards the public phones. I waled over and found that they only took special prepaid cards so I had to now track down a shop that had one. I managed to get one for $5, rang the hotel, and they told me to meet them at door 12 on the fourth floor of the terminal. This new terminal 3 is very strange, and big!! I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out a) why the roads were elevated to the fourth floor of the terminal, and b) how to get there. There were no elevators or escalators to take me there. I could see the fourth floor through the open design of the airport, but just not how to get there. After a fair bit of wandering and pointing up at the roof, someone finally showed me where the single elevator is that connects the main floor (2) to floors 3 and 4.

I got to my hotel in just a few minutes, got smoothly checked in, and took a quick shower. But yuck, the water here smells like sewer water! At least it looks cleaner than our water t hoe in Woy Woy. It was particularly hard to brush my teeth with that water. The beds here are very firm but surprisingly comfortable for the firmness. Maybe I should get one of these for home!

Once settled in, I decided I might give Michelle a quick ring to let her know I got in ok. However, they put blocks on all the phones unless you prepay the phone usage, it was now 1:00 am here (3 am in Sydney), and I didn't even know how to international dial from China. I had brought all my Lonely Planet books for Mongolia, but none for China. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

And of course no dinner tonight. At least I had eaten a protein bar I brought with me on the plane. And I'm thirsty!! No water anywhere, and I'm NOT drinking the tap water! It'll only be few hours until I'm up again.

Goodnight.