Japan, South Korea and Mongolia 2026

.When the alarm went at 2:50AM, I still hadn’t gotten so much as a wink of sleep.  The room’s air con wasn’t functioning, so we slept with the window open.  But, being next to a railway depot, there were train toots and train car connection clanks all night long.  With a 32-hour trek home ahead of us, it was brutal to have to start that journey on zero sleep.  No one said life would be easy! Ebo, the same affable fellow who met us a week ago and drove us from the airport to the city, picked us up at 4AM sharp.  Traffic to Changgis Khaan International Airport was minimal, and we did the 52KM distance in 45-minutes.  When we arrived at the airport, we ate the boxed breakfast provided by the hotel and, then, check-in, customs, and security were a cinch.  The MIAT Mongolian flight left on time at 7AM and arrived Tokyo Narita on time at 1PM.   The Japanese customs procedure was, surprisingly, disorganized and took a good chunk of time.  Once that ...

We got to bed around 3:30AM and were up again by 7/30AM. The plan was to go to Sukhbaatar Square for the processional (more on that in a minute) and then make our way to the National Sports Stadium to try to get scalper tickets for the opening event. However, the rain was like a tap being turned on and off, and the flooding was terrible. We knew we would be soaked if we attempted to get to the square.  It really looked like the opening would be a literal washout.  Amazingly, the rain stopped just after 10AM, and we decided to head out.  Fortunately for the event organizers, that was the end of the rain!  We made it to the National Sports Stadium and, as if divine intervention was at work (I have no doubt it was!), we found someone who sold us two tickets a few minutes before the ceremony began and he had only added a $10 USD markup per ticket to the selling price!  Chills went own our spine as we entered the Stadium.  After all the planning and efforts to g...