Beijing - Final Chapter

It came to Monday - our last day together in Beijing. Altaa and I went to a seafood restaurant next to the hotel in the morning. Maybe having spicy lamb for breakfast was not such a good option, but I couldn't have told it would be so hot from the picture, which just showed lamb in a frying pan. As I said, it was primarily a seafood joint and one of the tanks held a nightmarish lobster slowly scuttling about, but the weirdest tank held a fish swimming energetically upside down, gills flapping away. Perhaps it was mocking its fate.
After wandering in so many shops and malls around Beiijing, it would just so happen that we would find some new clothes and shoes for Altaa in the last hour while we were using up time until a minibus arrived at the hotel to take us to the bus station. Moreover, the shop was part of the parade directly opposite the road the hotle was on.
Waiting at the bus station for five hours wasn't fun, but the minibus dropped us off then and there didn't seem anyone official around saying when the sleeping bus - a King Long - would leave. The bus, left at seven, packed to the gunwales, as many Mongolians were taking bundles of clothes, tightly compressed in bags that looked like enormous balls of string, back to sell in their country. By coincidence or not, Altaa and I had beds next to each other (three beds abreast in the coach, one up, one down bunks). Made for Orientals, the bed was a bit short and I couldn't stretch myself out in it, but it wasn't so bad. We stopped off for a meal about midnight and then continued again, to Ereen, the border town, just as dawn was breaking.