Sadly it was a rainy day and there wasn’t much to see out the window (which needed a clean anyway). Not the best breakfast (think of a thin and greasy sheep hamburger patty inside a deep-fried pastry), but it was better than nothing I guess… It felt like my idea of Communism – I may have wanted buuz, and ordered, paid and received a meal voucher for buuz, but it was decided that buuz was not what I really wanted. I then received a bag from the kitchen with 6 khoshoor (deep fried pastries). I ordered buuz (Mongolian dumplings) and received a receipt to take to the kitchen with my order of 5 buuz on it. I had more problems buying breakfast though… I found a dodgy little Mongolian fast food restaurant beside the train station. Amazingly, it was only T16,000 ($9) for an 11hr 500km journey in a sleeper carriage! We actually covered the same section of rail in reverse when we first arrived from Beijing last week, but we were asleep for half of it. Our friend tried to buy the tickets earlier in the week for us, but was unable because they required all of our passports… Anyway, there were plenty of seats/beds and we didn’t have any problems getting on to the train. Booked a taxi to the train station and bought tickets to Sainshand.

It was another early start, which was even harder after a late night (thank-you late night kebab).