Time Irrelevant

11:15pm - lying on my not so comfortable bed in the not so spacious cabin on the train traveling to Ulaan Baatar. The train is very similar to the Russian one except it's older and managed by slightly friendlier Chinese staff (as supposed to the angry Russian ones we had previously). 30 minutes ago we stopped for over 3 hours while the Russian border control checked the entire train. Of course, shortly after we had stopped I realised that it was time to use the bathroom. I had to wait 3 and a half hours before I could relieve myself. The train stopped for a second time at the other side of the border so that Mongolian customs officials could put us through the exact same misery.

Spent about an hour trying to figure out what time it was. Throughout the whole of this Trans-Siberian trip we will have covered 6 different time-zones. Each book that I read told me slightly different information which made it impossible to figure out what the actual time was locally. Mongolia and China only have one time-zone which is hard to believe considering the size of each country, especially China. To avoid frustration I ignored the specifics of time I took great pleasure in simply eating when I was hungry and sleeping when I was tired.

Today we played cards with Walter (room mate #3) and read the concise history of Russia along with some introductory information about Mongolia to help prepare us for our arrival in less than 8 hours time. As we neared the Border, our room mate #4 (a Mongolian man who spent most of his time in the next cabin with his friends) asked Walter if he could try and hide the contents within his seat storage compartment when opened by the officers. He wanted one of us to stand in front of the suspicious looking packages when opening the compartment to hopefully satisfy the authorities. I guess he thinks us westerners are more likely to get away with it. Of course, none of us obliged and asked him what exactly was in his boxes. Surprisingly he declined to answer. All three of us have our suspicions - I'm pretty sure it's copious amounts of cocaine, naive Ali thinks that they are boxes of nuts and bolts (based on the weight of each small box) and Walter reckons they are explosives of some sort.