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| Sukhanbaatar square |
Easier said than done, however... At about 9am, Eiggy arrived to finish sorting out Mikio's trip to the National Park where I went the other day. As soon as she arrived, I asked her about where I might be able to go ti get stuff printed off, and she instantly gave me three locations less than a minute away! This was great, unfortunately, as soon as I walked out into the street armed with Anya's external hard-drive and a bit of money, I realised that it was going to be a bit trickier to find than just that, seeing as I had no idea what the places were called, and had no way of finding out what they were from reading the signs. As luck would have it, as I knocked on a small and dingy door, a woman came up to me and I asked her where the printing shop was. It turned out she owned the shop right next door, but that they couldn't print at the moment, so she sent me off to the General Store. There I once again ran into problems, and was already on the fourth floor when I tried asking about printing.
The most awkward thing about printing is the fact that it is not the same word, nor even at all related to the word in Mongolian. Hence, I resorted to pulling out the external hard-drive, plugging it into my hand and then pushing a piece of paper out through my fingers. The shop assistant I asked immediately got my gist and told me that the printing shop was on the first floor. I found it soon enough and after some debate as to what I wanted, I managed to get the man to print it off, but he told me to come back in 20 minutes, which I found a bit strange, but did as I was told. As it turned out, the reason it was to take 20 minutes was because instead of printing out a piece of paper, they printed it out as a photograph, with photography paper and all very good quality, for just 400 togrogs (about 18 pennies). Armed with this, I then went back to the residence to drop off everything and managed to get Jess to rub cocoa butter onto my neck.
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| The government building in Ulaanbaatar, Sukhanbaatar square |
Once this was done, I headed out and went as fast as I could to the Chinese embassy. This time, being slightly later, I was forced to wait in a short queue, behind seven people, none of whom managed to get the visa on the spot (four of these were French). Once I got there, I pulled out my huge wad of documents and handed them in one by one. I think she must have remembered me from Wednesday, as she asked no further questions, just made certain that everything was there, and, as I asked her to get it for me for Monday (they're closed on the Wednesday and Friday as well this week), she ticked a load of boxes and then gave me a small recepit to take to the bank in order to pay for the visa so that I could pick up my visa instantly on Monday at 4pm. I grabbed up my few remaining documents and left the embassy, doing a little jig in the door.
As soon as I stepped out, I saw Claire and Matthieu, two of the French people who had been trying to get their visas standing a short distance a way, so I went over to tham and had a chat. As it turned out they are staying in a different place here but were not too happy with it, so I suggested they come back to the hostel and ask Eiggy if there were any places left. It turned out that there were some places left, so they decided that they would come back on the morrow and move into the dormitory as well. Shortly after this, Elsa and Jess packed up and left to go to the south of Mongolia for a week and a bit (Tom left this morning to get the bus to Ulan-Ude on his way to Europe and then home), leaving just Aaron, Louis, Mikio and myself in the shared dormitory, and Mitsuru and Ufa in separate single rooms.
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