The road came to an end for Sun Yat-Sen in Beijing.While he was in his death bed, the war between western medicine and traditional chinese medicine was still raging. Earlier, another heavyweigh of the young republic, a Mr Liang QiChao, was diagnosed with kidney disease. He went for western medical treatment, going under the knife to have the diseased kidney removed. But, holy shit, the doc remove the wrong kidney (the working one).
Sun, too, admitted himself into a hospital in Beijing and went for western medical treatment, but his condition never improved. He turned down any suggestion of trying out TCM. We would never know if that would have made a difference. In any case, the son of Guangzhou, father of the republic passed away in Beijing.
Now back to the Trans-Siberia trip...I have been thinking of this trans-siberia trip for quite a few years, but when it comes to actually doing it, everything came together at the last minutes.
I have made a call to the China International Travel Service (CITS) before leaving for China to check on the availibilty of ticket from Beijing to Moscow. While they confirm there were seats, they were pretty vague about refund procedure should I have problem taking the trip. And CITS does not accept payment by anything other than cash or via PayPal. No credit cards.
Since I will be in China for about 1 week before arriving in Beijing, I reckon I can hold on to buying the ticket after I arrived in China. But thing aren't as easy as imagined. Once in China, I realised that, while there are branches of CITS in almost all major cities in China, only the Beijing one handle the Siberia train ticket. I called up in WuHan and AnHui and all was puzzled about what I wanted.
So, once in AnHui, I thought I will call up the Beijing branch and make a reservation, hoping to let them agree to help me reserve a ticket while I make payment only when I reached Beijing. Too bad, the Dragon Boat festival threw a spanner in the works. I was told on Monday that I cannot make a reservation but have to confirm my seat, and proceed to make payment. Another thing, they will be going on a 3-days Dragon Boat holiday from Tuesday. And by 'they', it meant everyone in the CITS Beijing office. This is absurd, for a travel agent to actually shut down during a long national holiday when their target customers are most likely to go for a holiday. I remembered once in a Sydney restaurant during lunchtime, I was told that I may have to wait slightly to be served because the cooks are having their lunch. What?! This probably rank high up in terms of absurdity with the SYdney incident.
It is Friday by the time CITS came back from their holiday. I called up and they confirmed seats are available for the K3 (Beijing-UlaanBataar-Moscow) the following Wednesday. If I want that seat, I will have to make payment with PayPal. I went to my PayPal account and then promptly realize that the amount of about S$770 for the ticket is above my PayPal limit. I can't believe things are turning out to be so difficult. I decided there and then I will just travel to Beijing the following Tuesday. If there are no more trans-siberia ticket, I will just go for the QingHai-Tibet train trip and go home from Beijing or even Kunming.
With that, I left for HuangShan, where I mostly have no internet access to contac CITS and sometimes have no mobile coverage to call them. On the following Monday, I called up the CITS and was told that there are tickets available. It sounds like the tickets ain't selling fast. That was reassuring. What's better, the price quoted by them was slightly lower. So it was on a Monday evening I left for Beijing from HeFei on a overnight train. Even earlier on Monday, I was still planning on the Plan B of getting to Tibet, until a friend reminded me that Wednesday is the last day of my visa-free stay in China. If I don't leave by then, I will be accused of overstaying. I looked up the Trans-Siberia. The schedule show K3 leaving China for Mongolia at the Inner Mongolia border at almost midnight of Thursday. If I made the K3, I wouldn't be thrown into jail for overstaying then.
That set, I made a to-do list (of things to accomplish on Tuesday) on the back of a receipt in my bunk on the train:1) Call the CITS office to check about ticket. Let them know I am staying within walking distance and will be at their offic with the cash;
2) Go on SIA website to redeem my frequent-flyer miles for Moscow to Singapore;
3) Go to CITS to buy my train ticket;
4) Get to a bank to change some Russia rubles;
5) and lastly, find a supermarket to stock up on my provisions for the coming 5-days train trip...over 3 countries, 2 continents and 5 timezones.
Once out of the train, I shot for the nearby hotel that I know have good internet connection (I have been there the last time I was in Beijing.) Item 1 was easily accomplished. But I ran into problem with item 2. I was able to find a seat available back home from Moscow. However, there was some problem with the website, and I was not able to complete the transation. I was only able to do it with a call back to SIA office. The lady at the other end of the call, after getting my membership number said:"Sir, you were trying to complete a redemption? But it could go through because you were making too much attempts and it is blocking up your queue." Well, mdm, I was making so much attempts because each preceding ones never well through on YOUR system.
After the brief scare, item3 and 4 got nailed down (there was no way to exchange my RMB to ruble at all, so I just got some USD, which is supposed to be accepted on the train all the way to Moscow.) By then, it was almost 3pm, and I finally found the appetite for lunch.
The rest of the day was spent getting the provisions. By the time I left Walmart (and I left Walmart only because it was closing for the day), it was past 10pm.So, everything is done for the trip other than turning up at the platform for the k3 before it pulls out at 7:47am the next day. I decided I will not trust the alarm or wake-up call, but rather stay up for the night. It wasn't that difficult as there were World Cup matches playing the whole night long.
And so it was, that I turn up at 7:10am on a Wednesday morning at the Beijing train station for the K3.
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