The Beginning - eventually!

Well, the last thing we thought we'd be doing on the second day of our Chinese/Mongolian/Russian tour would be sitting in a cinema at Northland watching "Robin Hood"!

Discovered on checking in at the airport on Sunday afternoon that the company arranging our visas had blundered by getting our Chinese visas too early (in February) and they expired the day BEFORE our flight. Result - two very annoyed would-be passengers forced to stay another 2 days in order to apply for current visas. Arghhh. Just as well our travel agents were Jetset Ivanhoe (aka Pauline Cove, my sister) and she and b.i.l. Andrew pulled out all stops to fix the situation. I'm sure we all have a few more grey hairs as a result.

We are now in Singapore waiting for our flight to Beijing in several hours. We'll arrive early morning and will catch the Chinese train to take us to the Mongolian border late afternoon the same day. Missed 2 days of sightseeing around Beijing and the Great Wall, but we visited China in 2002 so although disappointed at missing the start of the tour, we have seen the sights before.