The train from Ulaan Bataar to the Monglian border town was very cheap(the equivilent of 3pound) and our third class cabin has a gang of mongolian children who roamed the carriages terrorising the other passangers. We were the only westerners as most travellers opt to take the through train which goes straight from capital to capital. We were travelling with Sam, (a 20 year old american who was now living in Tokyo) who is a great guy to travel with and as he spoke japanese and alittle chinese are passage into china was made that little bit easier.
We arrived at the border very early in the morning. For some bizarre reason people are unable to cross into china by foot so along with hundreds of mongolians we packed into ex-soviet jeeps and sped-off towards the border itself. Our driver looked prity ruff and by mongolian standards thats bad. At the sight of a fifty-jeep-queue to cross the border, he decided to disobey a mongolian soldier, drive right into him until he moved out the way and then to top everything drove over stinger spikes(spikes used to stop cars in police chases) just to get a better position in the line! Our transaction into China was interupted when Oscar, who has a passport picture in which he looks not unlike a long haired heavy metal giutarist was taken into a side room followed shortly by me and sam. At one point the border soldiers drew the curtains and took us off one at a time but this turned out to be just a pat down search and they didnt find anything;)
We jammed in the chinese border town until late afternoon, practising our chopstick/ chopstick kung fu skills. We took a night coach from the border to Beijing. Ther coach had two tiers of weird half seat/ beds and we were situated on one five person bed with three chinese ladies. Although this sounds quite entertaining its not as these beds are designed for the vertically challenged chinese and when I tried to sleep both of my legs went numb because I am far to lanky.
In the middle of the night we stopped at a road side restaurant. The pollution in the air was so bad I started coaghing and had to go back into the coach to get some fresher air.

PHOTOS TO COME WHEN INTERNET IS NOT L A G G I N G