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Published: August 20th 2006
Thursday morning we made it to the Ulaan Baatar train station and found our train to Beijing. We shared a compartment with a very nice couple from Paris, who recently worked and travelled in South America and liked it so much that they decided to go to China too.
Jenny’s eyes were getting worse unfortunately at this point and she spent most of the journey sitting with closed eyes, comforted by the darkness of the compartment. We thought that it must have been the desert dust in Mongolia that had got into her eyes and scratched them - and we just hoped that the pain would stop soon so she could enjoy the nice scenery as we had both really been looking forward to this part of the trip. The train carriage was mostly Europeans again including a group of very loud intoxicated Danes doing the ‘vodka train’ tour!
We rode through the Gobi desert, which is amazingly big and arid. Once every few hundred kilometres we saw a ger camp, but the terrain was otherwise unable to support much life other than a few wild camel herds.
The border crossing was long and hard - as usual.
This time, though, it was much cooler as evening rapidly approached, and when we finally left the Chinese border town station heading towards Beijing it was well after 2am. The Chinese border was very funny though - as we approached they started playing very loud regal music over the platform speakers to welcome us; this then deteriorated and after an hour or so of waiting we were listening to Celine Dion and 'I will always love you'! After a more or less restless night we started going through the Chinese mountains west of Beijing and we all got really excited when bits of the Great Wall started appearing over the hills. Jenny, unfortunately, had to take our word for it as her eyes were pretty terrible.
Mid-afternoon we arrived in Beijing train station, which is the biggest station we have ever seen - resembling Heathrow airport more than Kings Cross. Already from inside our compartment we (or rather Thor did) saw the transfer guy holding our names up, and he quickly got us out of the crowds and into a very nice airconditioned car. This was extremely nice as the temperature was around 35 degrees and very humid... He
drove us to our hostel and we got settled in a nice, but basic room, which most importantly had air conditioning.
Having arrived at our hostel we could now relax a bit and start thinking about what to do about Jenny’s eyes. We decided to take a taxi to the Beijing International Medical Center where we were greeted by a very nice and efficient nurse who took Jenny’s temperature on arrival and whisked us in to see a doctor immediately (just like the NHS!). He diagnosed conjunctivitis and proceeded to give us 3 types of very powerful antibiotics, and although Jenny was worried and in pain she momentarily forgot all about this to fury over the irresponsible actions of this doctor - so he did help a bit, although briefly. After another few hours walking around the centre of Beijing we decided to seek another opinion as Jen’s left eye vision became increasingly blurred. This time we made our way to the hospital which we knew had a separate unit for foreigners (and VIP’S!). Arriving at a somewhat dated hospital we found a doctor who properly examined Jenny’s eyes and diagnosed her, as we had thought, with severe scratching
of the cornea. He gave us just the one antibiotic (Jenny approved) and some drops to take away the discomfort and asked us to come back in a few days if the vision and symptoms didn’t get better.
With this, we made our way back to the hotel and hoped for the best. Hopefully Jen will be able to see a little more of Beijing soon......
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