The 1000 Day Holiday

The last 36 hours have been spent in a train from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to Irkutsk, Russia.

3 of us shared a cabin. An aussie tour guide, a Mongolian woman and I.

We arrived at the border ~4am. This means the toilet is locked from then until it departs at 3.30pm. The toilet on the platform was open from 6am.. not too bad so far.

9am arrives, which begins with us being locked into the carriage for 4 hours for Immigration processing, and customs checks. And since we’re still in station, the toilet is still locked.

The process involves customs searching the entire carriage. Checking underfloor spaces, inside heaters, in the roof, everything.

Before they arrived in our cabin, the Mongolian woman had arranged with the guide to put a pair of boots with his stuff. All fine and good, since they could converse in Russian.
She had a heap of new clothes, jeans, and around 30 pairs of socks. Which she was putting inside each other, taking the tags off everything then strategically placing the items around the cabin.
Once the customs agent came to our cabin he went through everything. The Mongolian woman on the trains get searched extra thoroughly, as ‘cheap Chinese warm socks’ (that doesn’t make much sense) obviously have a lot more value in Russia if they bother to smuggle them with such quantity! And since we were in the cabin with her. We get the twice over too.

Our packs get searched, and what do I find under my pack? another pair of boots! The customs guy starts shouting something in Russian loudly at me.. so I just kept saying yes, yes, yes….

In the end she ended up loosing a few pairs of jeans and top but she managed to keep some of the socks. Bummer that she forgot a pair of socks and her passport!

So for helping the Cheap Chinese/Mongolian Sock Smuggling trade I got a really crap pair of warm socks that had a hole after their first wear. And a really spongy apple that she gave me before the customs guys arrived..   And she thought I could be bought for cheap.. HUH!