Up bright and early at 4:30 am for a 5:00 am shuttle to the airport. I made a quick checkout and while I was waiting on the shuttle bus they brought out a "takeaway breakfast" for two of us since we had dining vouchers and the breakfasts didn't start until 6. It was a tray of 3 meat dumplings, a wrapped triangle of rice and meat, something unidentifiable in strips, something else unidentifiable in strips but with suction bits (Octopus?), and a hard boiled egg. I ate the egg white, as the yolk looked a bit wrong.

Check in was smooth this morning. I got through all the paperwork of immigration, then had a quick coffee. It was pretty poor but it was coffee. I perused my Mongolian phrasebook trying to learn the phrase for "I'm vegetarian" but then my stomach started to rumble so I hunted down a cafe. On the way, I decided to give Michelle a call but still couldn't figure out how to dial internationally and no one spoke any English to help me out. I kept walking and finally got to sit down for breakfast but all there was vegetarian at the only cafe open was a fruit and vegetable plate. It wasn't bad, and it went down well with another coffee that was a bit better, though this cappuccino had cinnamon instead of chocolate on it. I booted up my new ultra-mini laptop and found that there was wireless, and that I could connect! I sent Michelle a quick email to say I'm still on my way to UB and that things are ok. I nearly ran out of time and got back to my gate. We boarded right away and off we went. The pane was one of the smaller jets, and I noticed that the Mongol people look quite different than the Chinese. I also noticed that they're a lot more relaxed and open in their manner.

The flight over was not too bad, but there was a constant haze that made flying a complete white-out for nearly the entire flight. Actually, come to think of it, it's been a hazy whiteout ever since being in Beijing. As we approached UB airport, I noticed that our descent was entirely in the clouds. We descended for nearly 20 minutes in complete whiteout conditions and I started wondering if we were ever going to break free into good visibility. I also started thinking about reading in Lonely Planet how UB is surrounded on all sides by tall mountains. I'm not sure how much pride in a successful landing competes against following safety procedures in China, but I was really hoping for the pilot to err on the side of following protocol when deciding whether to continue or abort.

After another few minutes, the plane violently accelerated and pointed its nose in the air abruptly. Finally!! I was glad that he decided to abort but I was just hoping it wasn't too late. I've been involved in several "go-arounds" like this but this was different. We kept the nose pointed high and we also had a series of sharp turns left, from what I could sense in the whiteout. Of course it was hard to tell since I never saw the ground or anything else. We continued this pattern of sharp maneuvers for a few minutes and then finally heard we were returning to Beijing due to bad weather in UB. Apparently there are no other nearby airports in Mongolia for alternate landings. And on goes the fun.

So this catches us up to where I started typing this. It's kept my mind occupied for the last hour on the return trip and I think we're now on the descent into Beijing. At least that's what it feels like in the whiteout. And now my battery is low. I'll sign off for now. See ya!

Ok, so now we've landed in Beijing. Upon taxi back to the gate, the flight attendants were ever so helpful by telling us the current time, temperature (in Celsius and Fahrenheit), and proceeded to welcome us to Beijing and wished us a good stay and a pleasant onward journey. Then we were sent off the plane with absolutely no instructions or information as to what was happening. After about 30 minutes of standing around, a bus pulled up looking like it was going to take us somewhere, and then it promptly left. After another 30 minutes, a Chinese woman held up her hand and everyone gathered around. She said one word, "Ulaanbaatar", then proceeded to lead the way. All 200 of us proceeded to get a complete tour of the new Beijing airport, overlapping our own course multiple times throughout our tour. Every few minutes she would stop, make a call on her phone, then change direction. After about 40 minutes of this, we finally ended up at a bus. We all piled on one of three buses and then were sent off to our mystery destination. Even the local Chinese had no idea where we were going. After a 40 minute bus tour of Beijing, we ended up t a hotel where we were assigned two to a room for the day. By this time it was 12:30 pm and we were all tired and hungry. Most of us took a quick nap, as I did, but others took the opportunity to get completely pissed (drunk) and become very obnoxious. We had a good buffet meal around 4:30, and I took a quick walk to the markets nearby and picked up some local bananas, a red bull, and some "France Bread" in airtight plastic. Some lady tried to sell me a duck but I passed. After a bit longer we were urgently told to hurry up and get our stuff together because the bus was departing for the airport. We were quickly issued new boarding passes and told to hurry to our gate. All of us barely made it to the gate before the new estimated departure time do to the hassle of going through all the security and immigration again. But when we got there nothing was happening. Our pane sat there but there was no sign of activity. After another hour of nothingness, a few passengers got fairly abusive towards anyone official looking and one man with ripped suit pants was the worst! He ended up storming off and none of us saw him again. Apparently, the plane was ready but there was no crew. Finally at about 10 pm the crew arrived and we took off once again for UB.

This time the flight was smooth, I actually got a veggie sandwich, and we landed the plane. At UB, customs was a breeze and all our luggage arrived. I grabbed a taxi to the Mongolian Guest House but I think I was overcharged. Its supposed to cost 3000 Tugriks/km, and it was 20 km, so I figured it should be about 6,000. The taxi driver wanted 20,000 and I told him no and asked another taxi driver. He also said it was 20,000. They said this was because there was no return fare and this was the standard airport rate. I'm still not clear but in any case it wasn't much and he was helpful in finding my accommodation.

By the time I got to the Guest House, it was 1:00 am and they had waited up for me. There are only three people staying here at the moment, and I have a room to myself with six beds in it. There's hot water here and it's clean, but the beds are very hard. I found out that I could easily connect to wireless here and was able to give Michelle a quick ring on Skype. I wasn't too hungry so I just went to sleep and didn't set an alarm. Goodnight! ZZZzzzz....