A Mongolia-to-China Border Crossing Exam

A little bit raw. That’s how I feel early in the morning after sleeping on the top bunk of a railway car.

After two weeks living a simple life in the Mongolian wilderness, using pit toilets sleeping on wooden platforms and cooking over manure-fed ovens, our expectations for Mongolian train accommodations were not high. Surprise! They were the fanciest we’ve yet taken. Picture beautiful conductors like cobalt-clad luxury flight attendants with lace gloves and hats at a parallel tilt, floors lined with Arabic carpets and beds padded with trim camel wool comforters.

Nevertheless, train sleep is an energetic cousin to our usual stationary sort, and after riding in that fancy carriage from Ulanbaatar to the southern border of Mongolia, I did not feel rested—and definitely not ready for the border crossing exam. Every transition from one country to another feels a bit like a test. And while we had a sketchy outline for this particular crossing, we had quite a few blanks to fill in. Taking this route was a big leap of faith in our friendly host’s recommendations for cheaper travel.

Upon stepping off the train, a taxi driver approached us to offer his services. We tried to ask him if we could catch a train from this station to China… blank look. We asked if he could take us to a train station on the Chinese side of the line… ding, ding! This was a familiar exchange. How much? $24? Outrageous! We could see the border from where we were standing. He communicated with a calculator that he was giving us a discount off his regular five-person rate, and we shrugged our shoulders. Guess we were wrong about that one.

The reason for the high ticket price unfolded over the next hour.

First, we drove away from the border—kind of unnerving—past an absurdly long line of empty cars—very strange. The driver rounded the end of this line and parked his car in yet another line of empty vehicles, signaling us to get out and grab our luggage (mind you, we are miles from walking distance to the border). We followed him and jumped into another car to grab our a place into yet another line, this one with running motors, all vying for superior positions.

At this point, another man jumped into the back of the sedan, which was already pretty squished with the three kids and me. This was a puzzling question, back to the lines of empty cars….

Ah-ha! Our driver has two cars: this new one he had parked in line two days ago; the other one we just left is now in line for the day after tomorrow. Quite a system!

Past a checkpoint, the strange man got out, and a female guard got in the back seat, just long enough to check her hair and makeup in her pocket mirror. We are going to check the box marked “vanity” for that question.

We entered no man’s land, neither Mongolia nor China, drove a while, and stopped to enter a building to pay a fee. Not sure what it was for, we managed to meet our driver on the other side. We got that one right!

Then, we entered the “quarantine” car wash, at which point, courtesy of the Chinese government, our driver’s car was sprayed with an unknown chemical. Leo had just put his window down, and the button to make it go back up again didn’t work. Oh, no! Our driver, with superhero strength, got out mid-spray to manually pull the window back up and protect our son. I tried to reconcile the error by offering him one of my precious hand wipes (a token gesture, like an umbrella in a hurricane).

At this point, our driver asked for payment and said he’d meet us on the other side of customs. Hmmm, how to answer this one? He’d been worthy of our trust this far. Heck, he practically risked his life back at the quarantine station. We handed over the cash.

After the usual rigamarole of jostling into line for metal detection machines, bag screenings, fingerprinting, and passport checks, we stepped onto Chinese soil. Made it!

Now, where is the driver so that he can take us the rest of the way to the train station? After waiting fifteen minutes, it looked like we miscalculated something. He didn’t appear. Our border crossing exam wasn’t over yet!

Meanwhile, an entrepreneurial Mongolian woman with blue hair and a zippered money pouch was encouraging us to take a “sleeper bus” to Beijing. A woman who knew a bit of English (but didn’t know anything about taking a train instead) helped translate the time of departure and arrival. It sounded like we could spend the night on the bus. It was a sure answer to achieving our destination and would save us the trouble of finding a hotel for the night…. we said yes.

Wrong answer? The bus was hot; don’t-leave-your-kid-asleep-in-this-vehicle-or-he-may-die hot. I tied my wraparound skirt across the windows to block out some sun. Maybe this was the wrong choice?

But, a saving grace! We met an international crew of English speakers with whom we could compare notes and swap stories. China, Denmark, Sweden, Serbia, Russia, and Mongolia were represented in this motley crew of riders, all a little unsure of how we were doing on our border exam, but all in good spirits. From them, we learned that this was the last day to enter China for a few days because of the enormous anniversary celebration happening there. Lucky guess!

And, bonus point! Our Mongolian driver found us on the other side, after all, all smiles, and bearing a gift of cheese curd for Seth’s shirt pocket. It looks like we judged him right all along.

My concerns about sleeping on our bus disappeared an hour into the drive. In the middle of a long stretch of road, nothing flanking the streak of asphalt disappearing into the horizon but grassland, the bus stopped, and we were told to get out and to unload our bags. It was like the part of your exam where you are told it is continued on the next page, except there isn’t a next page… Then, another bus pulled up, and we were told to get on (eventually, you find the other piece of paper and can continue your exam). That bus was like nothing we had ever seen before. In the place of seats, it had blanketed beds, two bunks high and three rows wide, slightly inclined so that one passenger’s feet tucked neatly under another passenger’s head. Here was our sleeper bus!

Given the great company around us, we would have enjoyed this experience immensely, had it not been for the noisy and jarring movements under the beds. Oh, and because of the anniversary celebration in Beijing, security was on high alert, and we needed to exit our semi-sleeping state to walk like zombies through several (irritatingly superficial) passport checks.

But, after two hours of blissful sleep in a parked bus, comforted by the cartoonish snores of all those around us, we were prodded off our beds and into Beijing. We may not have aced the border crossing exam, but we passed it nevertheless!

P.S. And the topiary depicting camels and kissing dinosaurs? What else do you expect to find in a Mongolia/China border town?