By Trudy
We leave for Schiphol at 11 am, waved goodbye by family, neighbors and friends. Our children Dirk-jan, Rozemarijn and Willy take us away. When handing over the suitcases, Dirk’s suitcases turned out to be too heavy. Transferred some into my suitcase and then it was fine. After dropping off the luggage, Nico and Marijke (our team for the next 8 weeks) are also there. We say goodbye and go through customs. On to Beijing. Landing after a good flight of about 11 hours. Passing through customs takes a while, but we are allowed into China. We are picked up by the guides Paul and Tony who take us to the hotel. We get beautiful rooms. The itinerary is discussed over coffee. Nico and Dirk are going to Beijing tomorrow and to the port on Monday to pick up the cars. After a few hours of rest we look for a restaurant and opt for hotpot. Delicious. Then we quickly go to our beautiful bed.
Saturday morning at 7 o’clock we take the bus to the airport and say goodbye to Nico and Dirk. Now Marijke and Trudy’s Mongolia adventure begins.
We have a beautiful flight, we see the mountains and the desert. There is still a lot of snow and it forms beautiful white lines in the country. At the airport we get our visa in our passport and then we enter Mongolia.
We are warmly welcomed by Oko (our guide) and her family and friends. They take us to their house in Ulanbataar where we can stay until we go to the China-Mongolia border. (Thursday) We are very happy with that. After a pleasant evening we fall asleep like logs. The next morning (Sunday) we go into the city and we are real tourists. We take pictures at the parliament building.
