Well we are off! 4 years since our last adventure. We have been talking about this particular trip for years…and its finally upon us. We are headed to Mongolia at long last.
It’s the usual whirlwind preparing and packing for this trip. We will be headed to remote parts of Mongolia and we understand that the western may fluctuate greatly. I suspect it will be similar to when we were in Kyrgyzstan and honestly we were quite cold at night, so we have tried to pack appropriately…that being said, we are carry on travellers and it is a snug fit in these bags!
I bought zip up luggage organizers this time that compress your clothes in groupings…not sure if they are helping at all honestly, but hopefully they make it a bit easier to find things.
I made a packing list for everyone and attached it to an IKEA organizing bin and handed it out to each of us so we could toss things into the bin over the last week or so. It seems to have worked okay and the girls managed to do most of their packing on their own. We don’t own a lot of dry fit or wool items, and those are strongly recommended as it rains quite a bit and we won’t have access to a lot of laundry services, so trying to limit the stink! So we did a couple trip to Bass Pro and similar stores to try and find a few items for each person.
We kissed all our fur babies goodbye and were off to the airport. Our family friends drove two cars with all of us which was so nice to not have to deal with a cab to the airport.
Unfortunately the flight ended up being delayed by an hour or so, but we ended up checking our bags during the boarding process which would hopefully mean less stress in finding overhead bin storage! We will only check bags like this if its a direct flight. We don’t have time to wait for bags that are floating all over the world lost.
The flight was uneventful…long and cramped of course…I swear the leg room keeps getting shorter and the space between seats narrower. Somehow this nice mom ended up in a middle seat! The things I do for my kids.
What’s amazing and noticeable this time is that our kids didn’t need us at all..they wouldn’t even have spoken to us if we hadn’t engaged with them. What a change from years past. They have become some great little travellers.
I watched a couple of movies and slept on and off. I bought myself a TRTL pillow for the plane…smaller than those neck pillows. It’s not bad. Maybe a bit big for me. For a middle seat, it was useful.
I have to get up and walk a lot more, my legs are too long to sit in those seats for much more than a few hours at a time. The meals were as you would expect. I ordered celiac meals and they weren’t bad and I got fed before everyone else! What a treat. Haha. We had 3 square meals which was great as we didn’t feel hungry when we arrived.
Once we land in Seoul, we discover they have another form that we need to fill in…once we get those filled out x7 and get in the line for immigration it is brutal in length and there is no AC. The humidity of Seoul is obvious even within the airport. It’s going to be yucky. It takes us at least an hour to get through. Highly recommend jetting off the plane and getting into that line as fast as you can if you’re coming this way. Do not waste time going to the bathroom and risk getting into the line up late. And you do need to fill in the secondary yellow form…its related to health and COVID.
Once we are through and pick up our bags we head down below the airport and catch the all stop airport train into Seoul. It’s relatively easy to find and figure out and its about an hour long ride in.
We are staying at a cute little Airbnb that can house all of us. We are only 7 right now, but Robert and Brian show up in two days and then Erik will meet us at the airport when we fly to Ulaanbataar in a couple days. We were happy to find this place that can house us all and that is close to a major Metro Station.
Its raining in Seoul as we make our way to the place, but its warm…did I mention its going to be humid and muggy! Haha.
