Day 19: The Missed Train

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

My precious, useless ticket from Beijing to Ulaan Baatar via the Trans-Mongolian Railway.

This is the day I dread to write about. After years of traveling to 72 countries, I like to think I'm a pretty savvy traveler. But even the great and powerful Chelsea makes mistakes. Sometimes small ones. Sometimes, like this day, a pretty big one.

Beijing's Main Railway Station

I did everything right. I was all packed and ready to go, hours before I needed to be. I arrived at the main Beijing Train Station (the correct one, although there are North, South, and West stations too). I used most of the rest of my yuan currency to buy a hearty breakfast of sweet and sour chicken and rice with veggies. And I checked and rechecked that my train was leaving from Gate 1.

I skipped the KFC in search of other food.

I wanted vegetarian food, but settled for whatever I could find.

I walked up to the gate and spotted a young husky white woman, possibly German, standing by the closed gate. I asked her if this was the right place for the Trans-Siberian to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. She said yes. I looked around the crowded waiting room and saw an older white couple as well. I decided to go ahead and take a seat since it was 40 minutes until the train was scheduled to leave. I pulled out my new diary and excitedly began to fill out the pages, beginning with Day 1 all the way through Day 80, with still a dozen or more pages left over for extra days, or names and addresses, keeping track of finances, whatever.

Inside the bustling Beijing Railway Station. Did I mention that no one speaks English?

Without looking up, I began filling out the places I'd stayed each of the days leading up to this big moment, my first leg of the Trans-Mongolian/Trans-Siberian Railway. I had bought this ticket long in advance to qualify for my Chinese visa, which required I show an exit ticket out of the country. It was not cheap because I'd bought it through a third-party travel agency, and I'd followed their advice and paid $50 more to have it waiting for me at my hostel when I arrived, which it was.

I had assumed that everyone else in the waiting room was getting on the same train, but suddenly it dawned on me that too much time had passed. I never saw anyone move or get up, but the three foreigners were all gone. I ran to the gate, my heart pounding. A couple of people with hardly any English tried to reassure me I was fine. But an employee of the train station looked at my ticket, and signaled that it had gone....just 10 minutes earlier. I was desperate to get a taxi and try to catch it at the next station, but since no one spoke English, that seemed a crazy idea.

I ran to the information desks until I found someone that spoke limited English. She told me I had to go to the Beijing International Hotel to exchange it or refund or whatever. I found another luxury hotel, where no one at the desk spoke English, but i spotted the wifi password and sat in the lobby like I belonged there. I wrote an email to the company that sold me the ticket, sent a message via Facebook to my Chinese friend Constance, finally figured out where the Beijing International Hotel was, arrived 30 minutes after they closed at noon for their Golden Week holiday.

It was a mess. To conclude, I lost the $250 ticket. Constance helped me book a $125 flight for the next morning. Too early to use normal public transportation, so I had to exchange dollars with her in order to pay a taxi too much money the next morning. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Suffice it to say, I did not sleep well that night, waking up suddenly, cursing myself for being so stupid. I'd wanted to take the train the whole way across Asia and Europe. Now I was flying the first part. Not my plan. Not happy.

Out to the cold drizzly day, I sadly went in search of another way north to Mongolia.