TRANSMONGOLIAN EXPRESS TO CHINA DISASTER - DETENTION AND HOUSE ARREST

19 July, 08, Ulaanbaatar

We had heard a few horror stories, but never imagined it would happen to us.

We left UB early morning on the 17th July to board the Transmongolian Express to Beijing. This 30 hours journey was going to be one of our luxury-train trips, as we had booked a Deluxe cabin with two beds (one lower and one upper berth), a single seater sofa, two small screen-tvs with headphones, a radio and a spring-clean modern toilet with a shower, which we shared with an elder French couple. Yes, it was luxury. The cabin had the best bed and best toilet I had experienced on the entire China/Mongolia trip. No kidding!
The beds were covered with satin sheets and a hostess brought in a kettle of hot water, cups, tea bag and coffee. We felt very comfortable and relaxed in our little luxury-cabin.
The train journey was really nice and scenic. We had so much fun and made new friends on the train (quite a few of them were Scandinavians), until we crossed to the Chinese border and we got pulled off the train. The Chinese immigration said that our Chinese visa was not valid anymore. We disagreed as we had got and paid for double entry to China and we had only entered once. They kept saying our visa was out of date and so we were asked to leave the train with all our luggage. We had already travelled for 12 hours and there was another 16 hours to travel to Beijing. We were taken to the immigration office and they refused us to go back on the train. They detained us and asked us to sign lots of papers in Chinese - which we could not read - and give our finger prints. Who knows what we signed! We had no option! (I was angry and furious - but as Amit calmed me down and explained that they could do anything to us - as we were held in China out in nowhere.) We were then put under house arrest. Two Chinese official walked us to a hotel and we stayed in a suite type of room. There was two rooms, we slept in one and the two officials slept right outside our door! Now, I know what it feels like being detained by the government! We woke up this morning, having made lots of calls to the British embassy and they could basically not help. All they said was that it was best to return to Mongolia, which is what the Chinese officials advised us to do. They said we need to go back to Mongolia and then get a new visa from there for China! Chinese officers arrived at the seedy hotel, collected us around 9.30Am and drove us to a building facing the Chinese/Mongolian border. We were told "You go, Mongolia" and pointed in the direction of Mongolia. We thought - is he kidding?? It was plain desert and the sun was burning the golden sand. With the trolley and Amit's shoulder still recuperating, there was no way we could walk to Mongolia. After much shouting and arguing with one of the Chinese officials who spoke no English and just kept laughing when we asked what to do, he suddently stopped a truck and asked the local driver to take us to the Chinese/Mongolian border on a truck with a local man. We jumped in with the stranger and 5-10 minutes later we were at the Mongolian border. We thought they would be understanding, but no at first they did not want to let us. They said we left Mongolia yesterday so now the visa is also invalid. So we said, were they going to keep tranferring us from China to Mongolia and then back to China and then back to Mongolia? The Mongolian officials wanted us to buy a new visa, so we said that we wanted to speak to the British embassy first. At first they refused us to make the call, but then they let us, and while Amit was on the phone, they called me in and said "ok, no problem, you just go back to Ulaanbaatar, we cancelled your entry of yesterday". So they let us go! We needed to drive to the train station on the Mongolian side and a local woman said she would drive us and of course she took more money from us than she should have.We reached Zamyn Ud - the hottest town of Mongolia (it is mostly desert), where we had to wait for 6 hours for our train to Ulaanbaatar at 5.55PM. The train trip took 16 hours! We shared a cabin with 2 local Mongolians who spoke no English. I slept in an upper berth and Amit slept in the berth beneath. A surreal experience. We shared some of the 2 local men's watermelon - that was kind of them to offer us some. They watched us when we played card and they just grabbed our Lonely Planet book and looked through it, then the picked our playing cards and just being curious. Definitely felt a cultural difference there - how they just took without asking. At 3Am, I suddenly opened my eyes -had been sleeping for a while, as I saw the big guy falling off his upper berth onto the floor, I screamed, he screamed and then I head Amit screaming, - I looked down horrified thinking that the big guy had fallen on Amit, while Amit screamed while raising both his arms in the air (luckily his left arm was in the sling, so stayed in tack - phew!), as he thought that I was falling off the bed and he raised his arms to catch me! Bless him. In the darkness, I grabbed his right hand from my berth and said "are you ok?", he said "I thought you fell out of the bed". The big guy was laying on the floor in a lot of pain, he had smashed into the steel table, which he had broken and onto the half water melon on the floor which had splattered everywhere. He just got back up into his berth, put his head on the same side as the steel table that had a iron bar sticking right into the air, and one of his arms dangling out of the train window. Amit and I did not sleep after that, we put our blankets together and covered the iron bar, to avoid the big guy falling and killing himself on the iron bar!! We were so cold without our blankets, but better to be safe than sorry.
Those two days that just passed have been full of surreal experiences and we are so knackered!