Tales of the 'ANGRY GINGER'

Got to love the un expected....  So after 30 hrs on the train, which I might add was a pretty great experience we arrived in Ulaanbaator.  First thing to do was alley our fears that our bikes were not on the train as we  had not seen any luggage cart during our jeourney.  Yes they were there and being unloaded.  So we headed over to the baggage area where they would be brought for us. 

Now unfolds the mystery of Mongolia and its customs department.  Could we take our bikes.  NO.  Why, cos first we had to register them in the country, pay money to every man and his dog and basically bend over and take it, if you get my drift.  It took us 1.5 days of paperwork and running between different people in the train station to get our bikes released.  WOW.  One of the fees was explained to us as “This is for that lady’s salary”  Oh well we were still laughing, maybe some more than others but hey we had our bikes.  It turns out they went through this last year a the airport so had organised with customs for it to be easier but customs at the airport and customs at the railway station are two different things.    And so comes our next chapter, customs at DHL is another thing again.

So Endura had been very supportive and shipped over our Endura goods for us via DHL.  It was some $500 postage to get it here.  Thanks guys at Endura, massive weight off our shoulders!  However getting the package would of course require some Mongolian currency........  The first price I was given over the phone was $170.  Yep a crap load.   We rode out to the airport to sort this one out man to man.  I sat down with the manager of DHL there and had it all expliained. Import tax plus processing fee = 15.5%   But this was not of just the price of the goods, which they had the full recipet for, it was also for the price of the postage included.  Yes they wanted us to pay them 15.5% of the cost of postage.....   Yeah this made a certain ginger not very happy.

I ended up getting the guy manger at DHL onside which was good.  The fee got greatly reduced to $80 and we also had to do a pretty dodgy move in the customs clearnece office to get the box cleared.  It seems that some importers use protein powders to hide drugs, so this would cause us a problem.  So it went down like this.  We waited unitl the manger left the building, he then called over his friend in that department, she opened the box, asked a few quick questions and then advised us to close the box ASAP before her manager got back.   We did some very quick taping and then got the hell out of there box in hand.  I think they were registered as “bike parts” 

Felt pretty good to get a small win and get all our stuff.

So with all that behind us we set about exploring the city of Ulaanbaator.  Its a pretty good place.  Write ups have it listed as a drab and boring city that has an average temperature of 2 degrees.   Well we have had 25 degs  every day and the place has quite the heart beat.  Nearly every 2^nd place is a bar of some sort, the cafes are not to bad and there has been plenty of great Vegetarian food for us as well.   We have checking out all the shops, getting used the crazy roads (manic drivers) and basically starting to relax and enjoy the place.

Tomorrow will be the opening ceremony which has us riding under police escort.  I would say that will be fun but in the briefing they suggested people who’s bikes have not arrived could walk with us as we will be only going slow.  DOH  I was hoping on Alice springs style police escort.