| 295 Mongolian Plains Sunday - 4 days to go before Siberia so I needed to travel further North West. For a change I took a bus passing thro prosperous oil town areas to another city. Being a Sunday the park was busy. I was kind of stuck as there were no buses or trains further for 6 hours . So I took another bus to a nearby small town hoping to get further.
You could see how the smaller towns have been left behind in the econonmic miracle. Rough streets and houses. I met some people having a BBQ. They were really friendly and took me to a nearby hotel. The owner's wife was learning English so she took for a walk around. | 
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Mon - I got up early I took a very slow train further North west ..no wonder the transport was infrequent we were entering the plains before Inner Mongolia and the region is sparsely populated. Eventually we reached the steppe and the train passed thro loopback tunnels as it climbed. (you could see the bottom of the train entering the tunnel below you). Then we were in the Mongolian plains. I wanted to see some countryside and Mongolian culture so I got down in a nowhere village. It was pretty basic and poor with a lot of old Russian built wooden cabin buildings. The highway was new so I switched to hitching eventually a bus passed and I got to sprawling Hailear City. Ostensibly supposed to be Mongolian culture, but all I saw was fake concrete yurt restaurants etc and a street of Russian girl brothels. Tuesday - walk around- strangely there was quite a large Mosque (generally religion is discouraged in China and Mongolians are normally Tibetan Buddists). | 
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Manzhouli- the last city in China - Cos the bus yesterday was much faster than the train I took a bus to the final city in China. A bad decision as the road was still under construction and and took ages. Arrived in Manzhouli, The look of a developing border town, quite a few Russians going into casinos etc I found the electricity company hotel. No one spoke English and there were no other foreigners in town except Russians, it seems that crowds of backpackers who do the Trans- Siberian all go via Mongolia so I was off the beaten track. No Mongolian Culture - I had hoped to see Mongolia culture in this Inner Mongolia Region, but clearly the cities were modern Chinese.
Wednesday my spare day for preparing for Russia, but unfortunately I wiped my pocket PC's memory putting a Russian phrasebook on it.
Thu- As advised I took a taxi to the border. I should have taken a tourist bus.