2006 in retrospect: first trip to mongolia

i was traveling to mongolia with an older lady volunteer from central philippines. it was her first time to leave the country.

our cathay pacific plane left manila at midday. that was after going through the early traffic congestions in the metropolis, the long cue for the airline check-in counter, and the usual intimidating interrogation of the philippine immigration officers. not so long a trip to look forward to because there were two airport stops before mongolia. i have always preferred several short flights than one for many hours. although this one just so happened because the south korean route was fully booked.

arrived on time at the new HK airport. stayed for a couple of hours at the airport, just wandered around. we flew via dragon air to beijing this time. we were in beijing at 9 pm - it was a late arrival. also, it was a new in-transit system for me - we had to get out of the airport and again get inside it. that meant we had to fill out arrival and departure cards (which were in chinese). by the time we reached the check in counter for ulaanbaatar, it was 1 minute before the flight and nobody was at the counter (closed!). with the aid of a chinese guy, we went to the airline office which was already closed. i did not worry but i was upset to have missed the connecting flight to mongolia. i have never spent a night in china, and had taken only short tours around cities near macau. now the same guy offered a hotel stay nearby. i spoke very little mandarin but was able to understand him and vice versa (with bits of english of course). we were picked up by a van and traveled about 10 minutes. it was past ten o'clock. upon reaching the hotel, i had to call the country manager in mongolia to inform her of our delay and that we will be arriving the next day. it was a relief to have spoken to her and she was very reassuring everything will be fine.

woke up early and had my first bath in china. left the chinese hotel at around 6 am. had tuna sandwich for breakfast at the airport. we boarded a MIAT (mongolian airline) flight for ulaanbaatar. the inflight meal was quite a treat. aside from the generous serving of wine, we were served haagen dazs ice cream for dessert.

as we got nearer to ulaanbaatar, there was this feeling of anticipated excitement in me. i have seen pictures of the landscape and people through the internet but this time, i just cannot wait to see what mongolia is like.

our plane landed at noontime. we had to wait for our luggage and we were the last ones to check out. unfortunately, they were not on our flight so we had to report to the information counter about it. and there we met our welcoming party - a program support officer and the logistics manager/driver who were already worried since it seemed to them everyone on the flight had already gone out and we were nowhere to be seen. a report form was filled out (in cyrillic scripts) for the missing luggage. now we were ready to leave for the city of ulaanbaatar.